What if there was a way to train your dog without corrections? I mean, no verbal or physical corrections at all.
Would you do it? You can train your dog without corrections and it is easier than you might think.
You see in dog training there is a thing called, negative punishment.
Negative punishment simply means that you withhold something desirable from your dog in order to teach them they are doing something wrong.
An example would be when you are teaching your dog to sit.
If you dog doesn't sit then you simply do not reward them.
When they do, you reward them.
Your dog is learning how to think their way through the problem.
Once they are rewarded a few times for the correct response and they are not rewarded for the incorrect response, your dog will understand that sitting is the action that earns the reward.
Why is training your dog this way far superiour to using corrections? I'll be straight with you, corrections, when used properly, do speed up the training process, however, there is a major draw back when correcting your dog.
That draw back is, your dog learns to respond to avoid correction.
Let me explain that, if you correct your dog a lot, either physically with a collar correction or verbally, the dog will listen only because they want to avoid the correction.
What happens here is your dog is not really wanting to work.
They are simply working to avoid punishment.
When you use negative punishment you remove the correction.
You simply withhold the reward.
Once the dog learns what you want them to do, they will repeat it more often and with more vigor than before because you have not put the stress that a correction can cause on them.
This develops what we call an "active learner.
" Active learning means that when faced with a problem a dog will figure it out.
Try new things, give you responses, and never stop trying to earn their reward.
Correction based training often times creates a dog that freezes when faced with a problem.
Instead of working to solve the problem they freeze up because they are expecting to be corrected Patience is a virtue here.
If you are impatient like me, you will benefit from this type of training as well because you will learn patience.
Removing corrections from the training process has helped my patience tremendously.
Dog training should not be hard.
It should not be a task that you have to dread.
With some patience, willingness to learn, and consistent training with your dog, training will become more fun, more rewarding, and you will be successful.
Give this a try with your dog.
Next time you are training simply withhold the reward until your dog responds correctly.
When they do, praise them and give them their reward.
Rinse and repeat for long term results.