Buck’s Dog Training Research Foundation
We are running the study the field has never run.
Dog owners are given confident, sweeping advice about how their dog should be trained. You deserve to know what that advice actually rests on — and where nobody has looked yet. So we are funding and running original research, and putting it through review before we say a word about what it shows.
Where this stands today
The Foundation’s written work is under review and not yet published, and PATHS is in preparation — it has enrolled nobody. We are not going to put conclusions in front of you before independent reviewers have had the chance to test them. When that review is finished, the work is published openly, in full, including the parts that do not favour us.
PATHS
The Prospective Assessment of Training, Handling & Sustained outcomes — a five-year observational study following real cases with identical measurement across three groups that owners choose for themselves.
Pre-registered before it enrols
The design, the measures and the analysis are locked and registered before the first dog joins — so the questions cannot be quietly changed later to fit the answers.
Held by someone other than us
An independent steering body — not Buck’s — holds registration, custody of the data, and the decision over what gets published, and is committed to publishing whatever the study finds, flattering or not.
Owner-chosen groups, measured identically
Three groups: a balanced program, a positive-only program delivered to an independent credentialed force-free standard, and a follow-along group running no formal program. All three measured the same way.
Consent and safety first
No dog is enrolled without an independent veterinary assessment and the owner’s informed consent. A dog that needs help gets referred to it, whichever group they are in.
What this study will not be able to claim
Because owners — not a coin flip — sort themselves into the groups, any difference between those groups is reported only as an association. Never as evidence that one approach beats another. A study that could settle that question would have to be randomised, and this one is not it.
It makes no case for restricting these tools, and no case for permitting them. Anyone who tells you a single observational study settled this argument — in either direction — is overselling it.
Our conflict of interest
Buck’s Dog Training is a commercial dog-training business, and it is funding this work. That is a real conflict and we state it plainly rather than burying it. It is exactly why the study is designed to be sponsored of record by an independent steering body, with Buck’s as one enrolling site among several — held to the same standard we would hold anyone else’s work to. An independent outcome rater, statistician and ethics oversight are contracted and in place before the study opens.
Can I take part?
Not yet — enrolment opens once the study is properly registered and independently governed, and those conditions are published in full rather than kept internal. You can tell us you are interested now, though: knowing who would take part and which group they would choose is exactly what the feasibility work needs, so it helps get the study open rather than jumping ahead of it. If you train dogs professionally, that goes double — the positive-only arm is delivered by independent force-free practitioners, so the study cannot run without them.
Looking for training rather than the research?
See our training programs