Uhhhohhh, you have picked a subject and a half here!!!!!

To begin - I am an animal behaviourist, canine behaviourist and canine psychologist....I am not a dog trainer.

I started out as a dog trainer.

There are many ways of getting a dog to do what you want it to do. Many methods work.
I can take a check chain and a dog and a decent lead and have the dog pay attention to me within half an hour, no problem.
I will not be happy about it and neither will the dog - in fact most dogs will spend half the time looking for a way out.

I can take a dog and a bag of sausage and have that dog pay attention to me in the same time. I will not feel secure and neither will the dog - it will spend half it's time testing me or looking for a better option with a more secure future.

This whole subject has no real right or wrong in human eyes. If it works and you can make it work with twenty dogs then you have a working training method.

15 years ago hanging dogs, especially the protection breeds, was a widespread and widely accepted "training" method.

Clicker training is the vogue thing now.

Only using positive reinforcement is a popular method.

Drastic correction, once a dog has learned the command, is effective.

It was only a few years ago that the whole police force in this country was under investigation for their dog training methods - new handlers were encouraged to kick, hang and generally abuse their dogs to establish dominance.

These are all established, well documented and effective methods of dog training. Each method will work for a certain number of dogs. Each person that has had results will use the same method with the next dog and the next and the next, only asking questions when it stops working or in a certain situation their method fails. (There are many more "one off" methods along the same vain.)

Every single method described fails to treat the animal as an individual.
Every method ascribes traits to breeds that are not as important as they first seem ( for example - GSD's used in protection work in the USA have to have European blood to stand a chance....USA bloodlines bred the protective and aggressive traits from the breed.).

Recent research proves that a dog is more like a dog than it is like it's breed. So, in short, all dogs will follow a trail but Bloodhounds are better at it (put simply, I know, but that is the gist). A dog is a dog is a ......wolf.

The differences between domesticated and wild canids are so small that scientific classification has changed to make the Grey wolf, the Arctic wolf (etc.) the exact same species as the domestic dog.

Take a few minutes to think about that....Yorkshire Terrier, Arctic wolf = same species. I'm really used to this idea and it's implications but my brain still goes, "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" every time I think of it...and I do that a lot!

To me, that means that domestic dogs and wild wolves know the same language - have to - they are interbreeding in every region they live in and if they didn't know what each other was saying they would be killing each other as competition, not making puppies! ( It has to be said that wolves have also interbred with coyotes - this behaviour came to a swift end in populations that were protected and coyotes became animals to kill if at all possible, they were competition. In many areas that wolves have been reintroduced in the USA the coyote population has dropped dramatically. This was a goal of the Government for many years and they failed. As fast as they could kill coyotes the breeding rate accelerated. Wolves have proved the best and most natural control, as long as there are enough wolves!)

Sorry, back to dog training....

I have had the feeling for some time that humans are going about in the wrong way.

Would you rather be an elected leader or a military regime?

Dogs, wild or domestic, work on the same basics as humans (that's how we got together). If you have a bully in charge, some individual that will cause physical harm, kill memebers of the society, be aggressive and watch every other member all the time then nobody is happy.

In my view this is your normal domestic dog that has problems with the family that it lives with.

If you see a leader as a strong, confident individual that is more concerned that the environment the pack is living in is secure, that the leader has food ( the leader needs it to continue it's defence of the pack )then the pack is fed. A leader has to show that it has higher matters on it's mind, greater responsibilty....as a pack member how do you know that the leader is a good one?

You rush up to it every time it approaches you and ask for attention!

If you get the attention you ask for it proves that the leader is not thinking about the things a leader should be thinking about!!!!!

If your advances are ignored - you feel safe,secure and looked after...phew!

Is this the longest post ever?

I'm sorry....but you asked and I haven't even started!!

Not sure that I answered the orginal question........got sidelined several times.....but
Great Question!