Quote:
Originally Posted by SamIam
Someone claiming to be a "positive" or "positive reinforcement" trainer? To me, they either don't know what positive means (and therefore have missed out on on the teachings of the very people who coined the term positive reinforcement in the first place) or are expressing a very narrow-minded approach that it is never appropriate to punish a dog, or to take anything away from them as a part of behaviour management.
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It's a very complicated debate on what trainers exactly are. If every trainer was to say I'm a positive trainer mixed with negative punishment, people would #1 get confused cause they have no idea what that is and #2 go elsewhere because the training seems to complicated and most people want the "quick fix".
I am a positive reinforcement trainer and by no means am I narrow minded, I've used almost all forms of training, I work at a shelter with trainers who have been training over 20 years and involved with dog training clubs, all of them know positive reinforcement (rewarding good behaviours and ignoring or not allowing bad behaviours to occur) works every single time with all dogs. I have seen abusive methods (hitting, yelling, spanking, leash correcting, shock collars, prong collars, intimidation methods) being used and the more hard headed dogs take to this type of training much better then soft dogs.
Now the problem with aversive methods is you have a shy dog and you scream and yell at it, it may do the behaviour but not because it's voluntarily doing it for you/to please you. As if you found something that is reinforcing to the dog and using that to reward the dog for performing the behaviour, soon having a positive association to doing what the owner wants the dog will more often willingly listen to you because good things come when he does!
Dogs do what is most rewarding to THEM! It's been proven so many times! Why do you think dogs counter surf? They are rewarded by finding food up there! Or if they are lacking social interaction, any attention is rewarding to them.
With positive reinforcement training you don't ever need to correct your dog. The punishment is not getting the reinforcement/reward and not ALLOWING your dog to fail in the first place, if your dog can't exhibit bad behaviours how will he practice them?
This means if your dog doesn't know how to come when called and YOU let him off the leash and then doesn't come back, who's fault is that? Certainly not your dogs fault, he's doing what is rewarding, sniffing and running. The appropriate way to teach recall is to be MORE reinforcing then the environment, then of course your dog will come back to you all the time because you're better then whats out there.