2026 : espoir, bonne résolution ou « coup de gueule » ?

Espoir : en cette nouvelle année 2026, 88 ans après la découverte de Skinner, pourquoi tout le monde n’adopte pas enfin le renforcement positif ?

Bonne résolution, car il a été prouvé tant de fois, par de nombreux auteurs reconnus, que le renforcement positif est la méthode la plus efficace, éthique et sécuritaire en entraînement de toutes espèces animales y compris l’être humain…Alors j’apprends, je me forme, je comprends et j’applique…

Il ne s’agit pas d’une opinion ou d’une « mode », mais d’un principe scientifique universel.

Des « coups de gueule »  car il y a tant de blocages à adhérer à une méthode si respectueuse.

  • tant de personnes, y compris les professionnels animaliers, ne connaissent pas les lois d’apprentissage universelles… il est si facile de donner des « coups de collier » pour se faire obéir surtout quand on ne connaît rien d’autres !
  • les humains n’arrivent pas à lire ou ne font pas l’effort d’observer et de comprendre le langage corporel des animaux…
  • encore trop d’humains aiment contrôler, cherchent encore à dominer les animaux par la contrainte et la peur, par manque de sensibilité, par défoulement ou tout simplement par méconnaissance…
  • beaucoup pensent que l’éducation en positif est permissive ! Car ils ne savent pas…

Et oui déjà en 1938 Skinner avait observé et conclut : un comportement suivi d’une conséquence agréable voit sa fréquence augmenter.

L’animal agit volontairement, par association et motivation. Son apprentissage est stable et reproductible.

Selon Rooney (2011) & Bradshaw (2004) les chiens éduqués par renforcement positif obéissent mieux, apprennent plus vite et beaucoup mieux sans la peur, avec une meilleure coopération et un engagement plus que volontaire.

La peur inhibe l’apprentissage, la motivation l’amplifie.

Quant aux méthodes coercitives, elles augmentent le stress et les comportements à risque. L’animal apprend par évitement, fuite ou défense.

 Schalke et al. (2007) et Vieira de Castro et al. (2020) a montré que les colliers électriques entraînent une augmentation significative du cortisol, un stress chronique, et une diminution des défenses immunitaires.

Et Herron, Shofer & Reisner (2009) ont observé que les punitions physiques et psychologiques sont associées à une escalade de comportements agressifs.

Les comportements agressifs ne sont pas « corrigées » par la contrainte, mais souvent créés ou amplifiés par elle.

Le renforcement positif protège le bien-être animal.

Et Karen Overall (2013), vétérinaire comportementaliste très connue sur le plan international, pense que les circuits dopaminergiques (plaisir, apprentissage) sont activés, et que la punition chronique entraîne une augmentation de la vigilance et des réflexes de défense.

Le renforcement positif respecte les besoins éthologiques et émotionnels du chien.

La relation humain–chien est un facteur clé de réussite, car les méthodes positives renforcent la confiance, la coopération, et l’attachement sécurisant.

Savez-vous qu’il existe un Consensus vétérinaire et scientifique international avec des recommandations officielles claires :
British Veterinary Association
FVE (Fédération des vétérinaires européens)

Toutes concluent que :

  • les méthodes coercitives présentent des risques avérés
  • le renforcement positif est plus efficace et plus éthique

Mais encore trop souvent nous entendons des arguments justifiant les méthodes traditionnelles :

 « Ça fonctionne et ça marche vite » :  FAUX  car les études montrent une obéissance fragile, dépendante de la peur.

« Certains chiens ont besoin de fermeté » : FAUX  car aucun profil comportemental ne justifie la douleur ou la peur.

« Le chien doit comprendre qui commande » : FAUX la dominance interspécifique est un mythe scientifique (Bradshaw, 2015).

Conclusion suite à de nombreuses études scientifiques depuis des années :

Le renforcement positif améliore l’apprentissage, réduit le stress, diminue l’agressivité, renforce la relation et respecte le bien-être animal.

A l’opposé les méthodes coercitives augmentent les risques comportementaux, détériorent la relation, ne sont ni nécessaires, ni justifiées scientifiquement

Alors en 2026 :  « Aujourd’hui, choisir le renforcement positif ne doit plus être une question d’opinion, mais un choix éthique scientifiquement prouvé. » Alors formons nous pour devenir les plus bienveillants et respectueux du monde animal, et cessons toutes ces cruautés physiques ou psychologiques visibles si quotidiennement, à l’heure où la plus grande prêtresse de la cause animale s’est éteinte (Brigitte Bardot)…

Références scientifiques

Skinner, B. F. (1938)
The Behavior of Organisms

Skinner, B. F. (1953)
Science and Human Behavior

Hiby, E. F., Rooney, N. J., & Bradshaw, J. W. S. (2004)
Dog training methods: their use, effectiveness and interaction with behaviour and welfare
Animal Welfare

Rooney, N. J., & Cowan, S. (2011)
Training methods and owner–dog interactions
 Applied Animal Behaviour Science

Schalke, E., Stichnoth, J., Ott, S., & Jones-Baade, R. (2007)
Clinical signs caused by the use of electronic training collars
 Applied Animal Behaviour Science

Vieira de Castro, A. C., et al. (2020)
Does training method matter? Evidence for the negative impact of aversive-based methods
 PLoS ONE

Herron, M. E., Shofer, F. S., & Reisner, I. R. (2009)
Survey of the use and outcome of confrontational and non-confrontational training methods
 Applied Animal Behaviour Science

Blackwell, E. J., Twells, C., Seawright, A., & Casey, R. A. (2008)
The relationship between training methods and the occurrence of behavior problems
 Journal of Veterinary Behavior.

Casey, R. A., et al. (2014)
Human directed aggression in domestic dogsJournal of Veterinary Behavior
Overall, K. L. (2013)
Manual of Clinical Behavioral Medicine for Dogs and Cats.

Mendl, M., Burman, O. H. P., & Paul, E. S. (2010)
An integrative and functional framework for the study of animal emotion

Bradshaw, J. W. S. (2015)
The Behaviour of the Domestic Dog
Remise en question scientifique du concept de dominance et promotion des méthodes coopératives.

Yin, S. (2009)
Low Stress Handling, Restraint and Behavior Modification of Dogs & Cats
Application pratique des principes de réduction du stress.

"Nous utilisons des cookies pour personnaliser le contenu et les annonces, fournir des fonctionnalités de médias sociaux et analyser notre trafic. Nous partageons également des informations sur votre utilisation de notre site avec nos partenaires de médias sociaux, de publicité et d'analyse."
Cookies settings
Accept
Decline
Privacy & Cookie policy
Privacy & Cookies policy
Cookie name Active

Privacy Policy

What information do we collect?

We collect information from you when you register on our site or place an order. When ordering or registering on our site, as appropriate, you may be asked to enter your: name, e-mail address or mailing address.

What do we use your information for?

Any of the information we collect from you may be used in one of the following ways: To personalize your experience (your information helps us to better respond to your individual needs) To improve our website (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you) To improve customer service (your information helps us to more effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs) To process transactions Your information, whether public or private, will not be sold, exchanged, transferred, or given to any other company for any reason whatsoever, without your consent, other than for the express purpose of delivering the purchased product or service requested. To administer a contest, promotion, survey or other site feature To send periodic emails The email address you provide for order processing, will only be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order.

How do we protect your information?

We implement a variety of security measures to maintain the safety of your personal information when you place an order or enter, submit, or access your personal information. We offer the use of a secure server. All supplied sensitive/credit information is transmitted via Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology and then encrypted into our Payment gateway providers database only to be accessible by those authorized with special access rights to such systems, and are required to?keep the information confidential. After a transaction, your private information (credit cards, social security numbers, financials, etc.) will not be kept on file for more than 60 days.

Do we use cookies?

Yes (Cookies are small files that a site or its service provider transfers to your computers hard drive through your Web browser (if you allow) that enables the sites or service providers systems to recognize your browser and capture and remember certain information We use cookies to help us remember and process the items in your shopping cart, understand and save your preferences for future visits, keep track of advertisements and compile aggregate data about site traffic and site interaction so that we can offer better site experiences and tools in the future. We may contract with third-party service providers to assist us in better understanding our site visitors. These service providers are not permitted to use the information collected on our behalf except to help us conduct and improve our business. If you prefer, you can choose to have your computer warn you each time a cookie is being sent, or you can choose to turn off all cookies via your browser settings. Like most websites, if you turn your cookies off, some of our services may not function properly. However, you can still place orders by contacting customer service. Google Analytics We use Google Analytics on our sites for anonymous reporting of site usage and for advertising on the site. If you would like to opt-out of Google Analytics monitoring your behaviour on our sites please use this link (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout/)

Do we disclose any information to outside parties?

We do not sell, trade, or otherwise transfer to outside parties your personally identifiable information. This does not include trusted third parties who assist us in operating our website, conducting our business, or servicing you, so long as those parties agree to keep this information confidential. We may also release your information when we believe release is appropriate to comply with the law, enforce our site policies, or protect ours or others rights, property, or safety. However, non-personally identifiable visitor information may be provided to other parties for marketing, advertising, or other uses.

Registration

The minimum information we need to register you is your name, email address and a password. We will ask you more questions for different services, including sales promotions. Unless we say otherwise, you have to answer all the registration questions. We may also ask some other, voluntary questions during registration for certain services (for example, professional networks) so we can gain a clearer understanding of who you are. This also allows us to personalise services for you. To assist us in our marketing, in addition to the data that you provide to us if you register, we may also obtain data from trusted third parties to help us understand what you might be interested in. This ‘profiling’ information is produced from a variety of sources, including publicly available data (such as the electoral roll) or from sources such as surveys and polls where you have given your permission for your data to be shared. You can choose not to have such data shared with the Guardian from these sources by logging into your account and changing the settings in the privacy section. After you have registered, and with your permission, we may send you emails we think may interest you. Newsletters may be personalised based on what you have been reading on theguardian.com. At any time you can decide not to receive these emails and will be able to ‘unsubscribe’. Logging in using social networking credentials If you log-in to our sites using a Facebook log-in, you are granting permission to Facebook to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth and location which will then be used to form a Guardian identity. You can also use your picture from Facebook as part of your profile. This will also allow us and Facebook to share your, networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Facebook account settings. If you remove the Guardian app from your Facebook settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a Google log-in, you grant permission to Google to share your user details with us. This will include your name, email address, date of birth, sex and location which we will then use to form a Guardian identity. You may use your picture from Google as part of your profile. This also allows us to share your networks, user ID and any other information you choose to share according to your Google account settings. If you remove the Guardian from your Google settings, we will no longer have access to this information. If you log-in to our sites using a twitter log-in, we receive your avatar (the small picture that appears next to your tweets) and twitter username.

Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance

We are in compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Childrens Online Privacy Protection Act), we do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years old or older.

Updating your personal information

We offer a ‘My details’ page (also known as Dashboard), where you can update your personal information at any time, and change your marketing preferences. You can get to this page from most pages on the site – simply click on the ‘My details’ link at the top of the screen when you are signed in.

Online Privacy Policy Only

This online privacy policy applies only to information collected through our website and not to information collected offline.

Your Consent

By using our site, you consent to our privacy policy.

Changes to our Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes on this page.
Save settings
Cookies settings