{"id":753,"date":"2026-07-17T05:43:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T05:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2026\/07\/17\/what-training-my-chaotic-dog-taught-me-about-power-control-and-human-beings-dogs-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T05:51:36","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T05:51:36","slug":"what-training-my-chaotic-dog-taught-me-about-power-control-and-human-beings-dogs-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/2026\/07\/17\/what-training-my-chaotic-dog-taught-me-about-power-control-and-human-beings-dogs-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"What training my chaotic dog taught me about power, control \u2013 and human beings | Dogs | The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

The holy grail of dog training is focus, whereby the dog stares unerringly at their handler, waiting for instruction, regardless of distractions around them. The websites and YouTube videos of celebrity trainers feature images of smiling men and women sitting casually at picnic tables or standing in high streets while a seemingly hypnotised doberman or vizsla (never, I\u2019ve noticed, a boxer \u2026) stands stock still beside them \u2013 irrefutable evidence of the trainer\u2019s powers of control.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/head>Moralising and punishing don\u2019t work for dogs, modern trainers argue, for the same reason that they<\/span> <\/span><\/span>do<\/em> <\/span><\/span>work for humans, according to Nietzsche. If a dog breaks a rule and then gets punished two minutes later, it has no understanding of how one led to the other. All it knows is that it has been harmed. For Nietzsche, humans become moral creatures once they understand how transgression A leads to penalty B, even when there is a substantial delay \u2013 potentially years \u2013 between the two. Humans are disciplined, punished and educated until they acquire that internal capacity that Nietzsche believed was most repressive of all: a guilty conscience, the most ingenious instrument of control ever invented. Freedom from guilt would mean living in the moment and forgetting one\u2019s sins: in other words, becoming more like dogs.<\/span>
\n\u2014 Read on www.theguardian.com\/news\/ng-interactive\/2026\/jun\/25\/what-training-my-chaotic-dog-taught-me-about-power-control-and-human-beings<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The holy grail of dog training is focus, whereby the dog stares unerringly at their handler, waiting for instruction, regardless of distractions around them. The websites and YouTube videos of celebrity trainers feature images of smiling men and women sitting casually at picnic tables or standing in high streets while a seemingly hypnotised doberman or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,7,170,37],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-attention","tag-consciousness","tag-dogs","tag-neuroscience"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":754,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions\/754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adlington.fr\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}