Positive Dog Trainer in Sydney – Book Today – Positive vs. Negative

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Positive vs. Negative when training a puppy

When we think about the world from a dog’s point of view, things can easily become either positive or negative. A puppy can easily become fearful of other dogs if she get’s scared by one or they can learn to avoid you holding a leash if they find outside scary. At this sensitive time it is important to make every situation a positive one. So let’s take a look at the positive vs negative training. This will help you understand how we can affect a pup’s emotional state in different situations. Here’s an opinion from your local positive dog trainer in Sydney.

Deciding whether to use positive or punitive dog training methods is one of the first decisions a dog trainer must make.

There are plenty of both out there. A combination of the two can also be used. So-called discipline-based training tends to use punishment as a major training tool. This could mean taking away privileges, inflicting pain, or some other negative outcome, if the dog fails to behave in the desired manner. Most common physical corrections include a leash jerk, shock from an electronic collar, or scolding, slapping etc. The opposite of this type of training is reward-based training. This means that each desired behaviour results in a good outcome, such as treats or praise, and unwanted behaviour simply does not give the desired reward.

Obviously we want to use the most effective form of dog training. So, which one of these work better and produces the best outcome?

What does learning mean?

Learning means a some form of change in behaviour that comes about because of an individual’s experiences in the world. For dogs this means learning an association between an action and an outcome. There’s a form of learning which most of us seldom think about, called “classical conditioning”. It is a very important and fundamental form of learning through which associations are formed between events occurring in the real world and reflexes or emotional responses in the individual.

Classical Conditioning

Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, a Russian physiologist was the first person to really study classical conditioning. His research on this topic started with a casual observation. He was studying the salivary secretions in dogs and knew that when he put food in an animal’s mouth it would always salivate. He also observed that when he worked with the same dog on several occasions, the dog would begin to salivate when it observed things associated with food. Pavlov realised that the dog’s response showed a special form of learning because it involved a response that can’t be controlled voluntarily. He realised that something special had occurred: An involuntary action (salivation) that is usually triggered only by a certain class of events (food) was now being controlled by a new stimulus (the sight of the experimenter).

Pavlov studied this process using a simple procedure.

During training he presented a neutral stimulus, such as the sound of a bell, immediately before he puffed a bit a meat powder into the dog’s mouth to trigger salivation. A few repetitions of the sequence “ring-puff-slobber” would then be followed by a test with just the sound of bell. Sure enough, the bell, which originally had no effect on the dog, would now cause it to salivate. What the neutral stimulus was made no difference; it could be anything. The important thing was that now the dog was responding to it as if that stimulus was the meat powder-by salivating. The dog doesn’t have to want this happen, or participate actively in the learning process, it will just happen on its own.

Teaching a dog to drool obviously isn’t the point here, the real importance of classical conditioning is that it is the way which we learn to attach emotional responses to things. All we need is to have a sequence where we encounter a stimulus, which is followed by an event which triggers an emotion. A few repetitions of “stimulus-event-emotion” will soon have the stimulus itself trigger the emotion because of classical conditioning. And this classical conditioning of emotions provides one reason why reward-based training procedures work better than punishment based systems.

Every time you give the dog a reward you set up the event sequence “sight of you-treat-pleasant feeling.”

And this can be done about anything, such as other dogs. The beauty of this training is that we can change the way a dog feels about different things, from negative to positive. Even if your timing is off and you are not a very good and knowledgeable trainer, there is no harm being done in this way. Every instance of reward makes it more likely that the dog will feel better about you/the situation.

The flip side of this coin is the use of punishment or harsh corrections.

The sight of you, other dogs, the training leash etc. immediately followed by pain or discomfort will ultimately come to be associated with negative feelings and avoidance.

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