A hot topic for sure.

I come from a farming background, I’ve never competed in formal dog sports or disciplines, my dogs were first chore partners and then became SAR partners.

Because of this, and the happy bubble that I’ve lived in, I’ve never really seen the dark side of corrections in training. My dogs have been corrected, sure, but never to teach retreiveing an object, getting a perfect heel, or holding position during a stay. And never with ear pinches, hanging on a leash or a myriad of other punitive “training” measures.

Instead they’ve gotten corrected for chasing a cat, blowing off a necessary recall after they’d demonstrated a solid uderstanding of it, trying to grab something off a counter (if caught in the act), worrying farm animals. Basically a correction is used when I want to extinguish a behavior or a behavior is harmful to them or other animals. And the vast majority of the time it’s a verbal “knock it off”.

A “no” is used to communicate that I don’t want them to do something (pro tip – if you’ve developed a good communication system and a dog who wants to work for you, that basic “no” is a pretty meaningful word to them)

As I mentioned in my previous post, my ultimate goal is to train a partner. A partner who chooses do the job, a partner wants to do the job. A partner who won’t quit. Not because they *can’t* quit, but because the job – and working with me – is rewarding.

 

 

I’m not philosophically opposed to correcting a dog, I don’t think it’s something that needs to be totally removed from training. I do think that as you focus on creating desire and a partnership that you’ll find that training is more effective than punishing into compliance and the (much fewer) corrections that you do give will be milder but at the same time carry much more weight with your dog. Because they *want* to work with you, they *want* to make you happy. And that *want* is is pretty darn cool thing to experience.

 

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