02 Jan What is balanced dog training?
Come one, come all! New readers and dog lovers alike.
We’ll be going over a bit of psychology today and learn how it applies to the dog training world. I know I know it sounds like a snooze fest but hear me out; it’s a very important lesson that will save you a TON of guesswork and headaches in the future with your dog.
I think it goes without saying there’s a million ways to train a dog; because just like humans, they all have different personalities. You may find two litter mates who don’t respond to the same training methods whatsoever, OR you may also find two dogs from opposite sides of the country whose learning processes are identical. Dogs are like a box of chocolates, you just never know what you’re gonna get.
What you do need to understand when training ANY dog you end up with are the 4 main quadrants of dog training. Why? Because no matter what style of training you decide to do with your dog, it will always fall into at least one of these quadrants.
I consider myself a balanced dog trainer because I use all 4 methods of operant conditioning; terms that were coined by American Psychologist B.F. Skinner while studying rats. You’ve probably heard the terms: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment & negative punishment.
Before we dive into these it’s important to understand that in the English language we define POSITIVE as being “something good” and NEGATIVE as “something bad.” Likewise, we also tend to think PUNISHMENT means “pain & suffering” while REINFORCEMENT means “encouragement to do something again.”
In this case our definition of reinforcement is correct, if we reinforce a behavior we want to encourage our dog to do that behavior again in the future. However, in the dog training world (or the psychology world) these other three words have completely different meanings.
There’s a huge misunderstanding in the dog training world these days. Many owners and even professional trainers think punishing their dogs is wrong; that it will not only damage a dog’s relationship with you, but also cause a dog to become aggressive. They have resorted to “purely positive” training, which is a scientific way of saying “I never tell my dog no, even when he’s doing something wrong.” Some dogs may respond just fine to these methods, depending on what you are trying to train, but it’s foolish to think EVERY dog you encounter will respond in the same way.
Here is the really mind blowing food for thought – there’s no such thing as purely positive or force free dog training.
I said what I said. Now it’s probably 98% positive reinforcement, but every single dog owner or trainer uses punishment at some point in their dog’s life. The folks who say they don’t use punishment are either:
Lying to you/themselves
OR
Don’t understand what the definition of punishment is and use it without realizing it
Has your puppy ever bitten your hand and you pulled it away abruptly to save your skin from being punctured by those needle teeth? Congrats, you’ve just used negative punishment.
I’m just scratching the surface on the 4 quadrants in this blog post, I’ll probably have separate posts for each quadrant so I can save you from a post the size of a JK Rowling novel. Stay tuned for those posts, I’ll be sharing the most common forms of each principle, the best ways to use them effectively & why they work.
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