War of Techniques

I hope you’re blissfully unaware of this, but there’s an ongoing battle in the dog training industry about what techniques are the best. I’m going to tackle this briefly.

Having worked with trainers of all varieties, here’s what I’ve learned: all dog training works on most dogs.

There. I said it. Pick the kind that resonates best with you, because that’s the one you’ll follow through with the most.

Some science: positive reinforcement training works best at teaching dogs to do something.

Some personal experience: consequences work best to stop a behavior.

Some science about consequences: the consequence has to be enough to break through the bad behavior and stop it cold, otherwise it won’t work. So if you pop your dog’s leash and your dog doesn’t stop lunging, you’re going to have to get really powerful, fast, and dramatic before it breaks through. That most certainly isn’t ideal, because it’s generally not humane. This is where I break with most positive reinforcement only trainers, because I’m willing to, say, put a prong collar on a dog and pop that rather than give up on the dog or put it down. Though that said, I’ve found that using guidance-based training works much better.

What is guidance based training? It’s things like teaching the dog to sit down when you lift on the collar, so the next time they start losing their mind at another dog, you can make them sit down, which will calm the reaction, and give you time to redirect or move away or whatever you need to do to make the situation bearable. Bit by bit, the dog realizes they don’t have to react, and all situations become bearable.

“Why not teach them to sit down when you tell them to sit?” I hear you cry.

Oh, I do that, too. But sometimes their mind is so gone that they can’t hear you. They always, however, respond to something physically affecting their body. Especially if that thing is uncomfortable–and I’m okay making a dog uncomfortable in order to change behavior.

Now, more science: on average, positive reinforcement training works best for everything.

My personal experience: I’ve saved a lot of dogs from being rehomed or put down after positive reinforcement training has failed, and we use something aversive — like a squirt bottle — to stop a behavior. So, regardless of what the science says, I find using a bit of both to be best. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe that’s a specific subset of dogs on whom positive reinforcement training doesn’t work. Maybe it’s because I’m watching and teaching the body language so we don’t move the dog too far into stress and never into anxiety or trauma. I don’t know why, but I know it’s true. (Believe me, I put waaaaay too much thought into this.)

So, there you have it, from a totally biased source: Positive reinforcement is usually the way to go, according to science.

Unless you have a dog for whom it’s not working, and then you see someone like me. I suppose other people would call me a balanced trainer, though I consider myself a holistic trainer, using body language and guidance-based training mostly to get the results I need. Who knows? What I know is that it works.

Jenna