How taking part will work
Prospective Assessment of Training, Handling & Sustained outcomes is a 5-year study that will follow real dogs and real owners over time. It is not open yet. This is what taking part will involve, and what has to be true before anyone is asked to.
Enrolment is not open. Telling us you are interested is.
No dog can be enrolled until the nine conditions below are met. But knowing who would take part, and which group they would choose, is exactly what two of those conditions require — so saying you are interested now genuinely helps get the study open, rather than jumping ahead of it.
The form asks for your name, how to reach you, which group interests you, and whether you are a trainer. Nothing else. No dog records, no health history, no assessment — none of that is collected or held until the study is open, you have been screened, and you have signed a consent form you have actually read.
What has to be in place before a single dog is enrolled
These are not aspirations. They are the nine conditions the system itself enforces: our own software refuses to enrol anyone until every one of them is recorded and verified.
- 1
OSF registration DOI
The design and analysis plan published to a public registry before enrolment, so it cannot be quietly revised later.
- 2
Animal Study Registry (BfR) DOI
Registration with the animal-study registry, the same standard applied to research on animals in other fields.
- 3
Commercial IRB approval number
An independent review board signing off on how owners are consented and treated.
- 4
IACUC-equivalent approval number
Independent animal-welfare oversight of the protocol itself.
- 5
Signed SAP hash
The statistical analysis plan, signed and fixed before any data exists, so the analysis cannot be chosen to suit the result.
- 6
Feasibility-model hash
Evidence the study can actually recruit and measure enough dogs to answer anything at all.
- 7
Steering-body sponsor-of-record charter
The charter handing sponsorship, data custody and the publication decision to a body that is not Buck’s.
- 8
Force-free endpoint co-ratification
The force-free side formally agreeing the outcome measures are fair before anything is measured — not after.
- 9
Per-cohort × severity feasibility
Evidence each group can be filled across the range of severities, rather than one arm quietly becoming the easy cases.
The three groups
Owners will choose their own group — we will not assign anyone. That choice is the study’s biggest limitation and we would rather be straight about it than pretend otherwise: it is why any difference between the groups can only ever be reported as an association, never as proof that one approach beats another.
Balanced program
A reward foundation plus fair, well-timed structure — the program Buck’s runs. Delivered by Buck’s as one enrolling site among several.
Positive-only (force-free) program
Delivered to an independent, credentialed force-free standard by a practitioner who is not us — so the comparison is not one side grading its own homework.
Follow-along (no formal program)
No training program from anyone as part of the study. We simply measure over time. A fit if you were not planning a formal program anyway.
What will happen, in order
- 1
You get in touch
A first conversation. It will commit you to nothing and will not place your dog in a group.
- 2
Screening, then an independent veterinary assessment
We talk through your dog and what you are dealing with. Every dog is then assessed by a vet who is independent of us — that assessment, not our opinion, establishes where your dog is starting from.
- 3
Informed consent, in writing
You are shown exactly what is measured, how often, for how long, and what happens to the data — before you agree to any of it. No dog is enrolled without it.
- 4
You can stop at any point
Taking part will be voluntary from the first conversation to the last year. Withdrawing will not affect the training you get from us in any way.
A dog that needs help will get help
This will hold whichever group a dog is in, including the follow-along group that runs no program. If at any point a dog needs intervention, we say so and point the owner to it. No dog is left without help to keep a dataset tidy — a study that would do that is not one worth running.
How the study is held to accountIf you train dogs for a living, we need you more than we need another single dog
The positive-only arm is delivered by independent credentialed force-free practitioners — by them, to their standard, not by us. That is not a courtesy, it is the design: a comparison where one side picks both teams is worth nothing. So the study structurally cannot run until the other camp is in it.
Force-free and R+ professionals
The positive-only arm is delivered to your standard, by you — not by us. You would help ratify the outcome measures before anything is counted, so the comparison cannot be rigged by whoever wrote it. If you believe the evidence favours your approach, this is how that gets tested rather than asserted.
Balanced trainers
The same invitation, on the same terms. Your clients enrol under identical measurement, and your results are reported by people who are not you.
Veterinarians and behaviourists
Every dog needs an independent assessment before enrolment, and referrals for dogs the study should not take. That role sits outside Buck’s by design.
Tell us you are interested
This is not enrolment and it commits you to nothing. It tells us who would take part and which arm they would choose — which is what the feasibility work needs — and it means you hear first when the study opens. If you train dogs professionally, tick the box: that is the fastest way to move this forward.