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Positive dog training the way you should train your be.st my brain for dogs amazon
Early warning here this is an essay. Sorry. Positive Reinforcement. By definition, the act of increasing a behaviour by adding a positive stimulus to the situation when it occurs. For example, dog sits dog gets treat. Dog figures out that sit treat, does sit more often. Its a great way of training dogs to do what you want them to do. You also see the term force free thrown around, which has many definitions. To me, force free means you dont forcefully handle the dog into doing something it doesnt want to do, such as pushing it into a sit. Its great for doing basics, but when youre out and about, all this positive reinforcement and force free can go stuff itself when the safety of you, your dog and anyone nearby and their dogs are on the line. The most important thing while out on a walk is that the handler is safe and coident with handling a dog. However, positive reinforcement training does not wor.k when it comes to replacing behaviours. People like to call it correction, but replacing sounds nicer and is what you should be doing. If you tell a dog he cant chew the sofa, fair enough he wont chew the sofa. However, if you dont tell him what he can chew, such as his toys, then he may go and find some other piece of furniture to chew, such as the kitchen table. In my opinion, as a balanced trainer, the be way of replacing a behaviour is to transition between negative punishment and positive reinforcement. Negative punishment, is essentially the opposite of positive reinforcement, as it involves decreasing an unwanted behaviour by removing a positive stimulus from the situation. For example, if a dog tries to pull to get to the park quicker and you turn and go the other way, he is no longer heading towards the park. He might then start to realise that pulling longer trip to the park. When he uses his brain like this, then THAT is the time to use positive reinforcement. Teach him to check in with you on a loose lead, even walking to heel if he gets the hang of that quickly. The important thing is that he is no longer surgically removing your arm from its socket to get to the park quicker, and since he is now showing good behaviours, you can reinforce it. Theres also negative reinforcement increasing a good behaviour by removing something bad, but because dogs dont think like us, and that it requires the subject to be aware of the bad stimulus in the first place, it is rather difficult to apply to dog training. Then positive punishment decreasing a bad behaviour by adding something bad. This is the one that everyone thinks of when they see or hear the word punishment when it comes to dog training, and it is the one that you ideally want to avoid the most. There are people who say that dogs do it to each other so we should punish them too when the misbehave. The difference is that we are not dogs. Heres an example of that. My dog is fairly sensitive and a little nervous sometimes when she meets other dogs out on walks. One day we came a cross a seven month Husky puppy, right in the middle of the invincible phase where he thinks he can do anything she wants, such as jump all over my dog. Most dogs would simply disengage or show submission, but not my dog. She was born in Romania aka stray dog hell, and survived Parvovirus and a ki.ll shelter, as well as a four day trip across Europe to the UK, where she then had to survive our terrible weather. Not to mention the day care she attends twice a week where she gets plenty of dog on dog interaction. She is a hardened veteran of a dog, and she is not so easily fazed. When yelping and tail tucking didnt wor.k, she absolutely let loose at this dog. Snarling, snapping and whites of the eyes and full rows of teeth on display and this Husky, who need I remind you was in the phase where boundaries dont exist, backed down. All without physical co.ntact too. The Husky then tried a nicer approach, going up to her nice and calmly with a bit of sniffing, and within a minute they were happily running and playing, now that boundaries had been made. Notice how the situation transitioned from positive punishment the spectacular display to positive reinforcement the play afterwards. This only word out because both of them were dogs. Only dogs can show those kinds of signals in a way that wor.ks. Try growling at your dog and at be youll get a horrible pooey mess in the house as they brick themselves, and at worst youll make them angry. Either way your dog will be very coused, because he understands that you are not a dog and you are making some very unusual noises. TLDR Positive reinforcement only wor.ks when there are no bad behaviours. Positive reinforcement and negative punishment are be for replacing behaviours. Avoid positive punishment wherever possible.
