It’s the canine equivalent of gentle v tough parenting – and there is no sign of a ceasefire. So what is the correct way to get man’s best friend to behave?

Is this about dogs fighting? No, it’s the trainers who are fighting.

What are they fighting about? There are two camps: “positive” trainers, and “balanced” trainers. The former rely on rewards, the latter on a range of disciplinary stimuli, which might extend to prong collars that dig into a dog’s neck when it pulls.

What do the balanced ones say about the positive ones? “It’s all treats, treats, treats, so help me God,” the dog trainer Brian Lee told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s no different than giving your kid a BMW on his 16th birthday.”

And how do positive trainers address these allegations? “I kind of laugh at this whole idea that using treats in training is somehow going to spoil dogs,” says another dog trainer Victoria Stilwell.

I don’t see this getting resolved any time soon. Rewarding dogs with too many treats is “the biggest problem with dog training at the moment,” says the animal behaviourist Dr Ian Dunbar, despite standing in the positive camp.

If I’m honest this war of words doesn’t sound that heated. But it’s getting worse thanks to social media.

To be fair, everything is getting worse thanks to social media. Positive trainers call balanced trainers cruel; balanced trainers call positive trainers “treat-slinging wieners”.

Is this the dog version of the “gentle parenting” v Fafo parenting debate from earlier this year?

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