ProxyBoy,
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2.) Don't disagree and this is on the list of things we would like to get if nothing else for the cheap practice... my wife actually (NO READ THIS), kind of snubs her nose at the idea of a .22... she LIKES shooting the large caliber guns. See why it doesn't make sense to make sure not to "scare her off".
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You are reading a whole lot more into the advice than you were given, I think.
The reason it makes sense to get a new shooter started with a .22 is
NOT because they might get "scared off" with a larger caliber. It has nothing to do with emotions at all, in fact.
Shooting is a sport like many others: it requires time and lots of practice to develop the basic skill sets that help you reach success. More than that, it requires
correct practice -- that is, lots of repetitions doing something right in order for your muscles to "naturally" do the right thing without a lot of high-concentration effort.
If instead you repeatedly practice doing the wrong thing, you will never improve.
Beginners who start with larger calibers often have significant problems with a flinch. Again, this is
NOT an emotional problem ("she doesn't like the sensation of shooting a larger caliber") even though sometimes the shooter's like or dislike of the sensation can come into play. It simply comes from the mechanics of shooting a gun with more recoil versus one with less recoil.
Put more simply: when you shoot a gun with lower recoil, you are more likely to practice doing the right thing and
less likely to practice doing the wrong thing.
Since your wife obviously has a signficant flinch already, she would almost certainly benefit from
1) instruction from someone who knows what they are looking at and knows how to instruct the change,
followed (not preceded) by
2) lots of dry fire, and
3) using a lower-recoil firearm such as an all-steel .22 that really soaks up the impulse.
Once the flinch has been beaten into submission, she can readily transfer her new skills over to other firearms and will rapidly progress with them because she'll have experience doing the right things with the trigger and her muscles.
Yes, this is less fun than simply blasting away at the side of a hill or something. But hitting the target is a great deal more fun than missing it.
More here (though past experience suggests there's no point, perhaps it will help others):
www.CorneredCat.com/Basics/flinch.aspx
pax
(Edited to add: I agree with Powderman that in this case, any dry firing you do should happen at the range, not in your own home.)