Dog Training: Positive Reinforcement

In dog training you can use positive and negative reinforcement to get your dog to behave well.  Positive reinforcement for good behavior may be praise, a treat, pat on the head or a clicker.  The dog learns to associate his actions (good behavior) with the reward so he gets conditioned to do what you want.

Dog Training: Negative Reinforcement

Negative reinforcement in dog training can be called a correction.  Some dog training methods only recommend using positive reinforcement.  Using corrections can speed up the training process because your dog doesn’t need to guess what he did wrong; you just need to learn an effective way to communicate his mis-guided behavior to him.

Pitfalls Of All Positive Reinforcement

Constant reward for good behavior can backfire.  If every time your dog gets a reward for good behavior you are teaching him how to get a reward.  Stop doling out the rewards and the (good) behavior stops, sometimes.  That is why it is important not to give a reward, especially food, every time your dog does something good.

Corrections in Dog Training

Corrections let your dog know that some specific behavior in not desired by you and that the consequences might even be unpleasant if he continues to do them. It helps get the point across sooner than later and improves communication with your dog.

A Story

Here’s an analogy that you might relate to.  Let’s say you work for some boss that gives you a performance review each year.  You are a pretty good worker but you are interested in doing even a better job than you already do.  Heck, maybe you even want a promotion.

Now you are sitting in your PR and your boss says your doing great, just keep up the good work. Nice.  Ugh.  But you know that you are not perfect and you have absolutely no clue of what you could do to get your next promotion. No one has offered any corrections to your work so how can you improve?

Think about your dog.  Your dog is just being a dog with his own dog thoughts about what’s right.  So when he jumps on you because he’s excited to see you can immediately tell him no jump and knock him in the chest with your knees (or gently step on his toes if he’s little) to get the point across right away.  You’re correcting his behavior, not punishing him.  The unpleasant response to his jumping will get him off you quickly.

Dog Training Courses

Every dog training situation will have many possible correction opportunities that you can use to improve communication with your dog.  It all depends on your situation.  You can find a dog training course that shows you how to implement a correction correctly while dog training to speed up the training process.

The goal of dog training is to get your dog to be a disciplined and respectful member of your family and to learn how to and improve communication with your dog.  This dog training resource is recommended because it follows the method of using both positive response and corrections to communicate the desired behavior to the dog.

Recommendations  – Try This Out!

There are many decent dog training products available.  One that uses corrections and praise is what we recommend. 

You can download this ebook that will give you an overview of an extremely high quality dog training coure by clicking the image and saving to your computer.  No email required.

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