Why Positive Reinforcement Is Best

Understanding Fear

When a dog feels threatened it will try to move away and create some distance in order to feel safe. But when a dog can't get away, it will choose one of the only two remaining choices: It will submit in an effort to make the threat stop or feel it has no other choice but to fight. Fear based associations are negative and make for negative behaviour reactions and a very unhappy dog.  Negative associations are made when a dog feels pain, alarm or confusion. 

What are Aversive training tools and why we don't use them?

Choke chain, Prong/pinch and shock/e-collars hurt. These are marketed as training tools for teaching your dog its basic commands and come with a promise of stopping unwanted behaviour! But there is no surer way to further complicate matters by using these devices in training or behaviour modification.

Having your dog experience pain, confusion and anxiety, while being stuck in the presence of the thing it's aroused by, afraid of or feeling angry toward will give your dog an experience it won't forget. You will think you have your dog's attention and will subject it to the same experience again while in the presence of the thing your dog is now more fixated by, more afraid of or now enraged by. Your dog can work out that you are on the other end of these aversive tools and can not get away from you; turning on you in a desperate fight to make the experience stop. The dogs that look ok with it have learned helplessness and are appeasing you by avoiding punishment in a bid to preserve themselves. 

The use of aversive devices can cause physical injury, mess up a dogs mind and damage the relationship between you and your dog. It's no way to encourage a balanced emotional response! The subject of behaviour and associative learning in dogs and the skill required to train dogs, is far more complicated than buying a device for the job.

Training with knowledge, compassion and understanding instead, will get you true results that will shape your dog into a genuine and reliable character that will want to live with you.

What we want you to know!

Too many Dog Trainers continue to promote outdated ideas about dogs. For example, the existence of a Dominance Hierarchy within canine social structure and why that's the reason your dog respects you or not. And yet, it is well understood amongst the academic community that there is no dominance hierarchy for dogs! This fact is not brand new information. Alarmingly, the truth about how dogs think and behave has not managed to permeate the standard dog training ethos that continues to exist. Social Media appears to have propagated information from ages past! Aversive training tools continue to be marketed online. It's a big industry controlled by the human species. Humans can have a dominance hierarchy going on in their social structure. Perhaps it is no surprise that those we live with, namely dogs, are forced to fit in with our assumptions.

Dominance Hierarchy exists where an individual animal is dominant over a lower ranking member of the group or is submissive to a higher ranking member of the group. The Jeanne Marchig International Centre For Animal Welfare Education, University Of Edinburgh, pointed out the following truths in a document titled Understanding Canine Social Structure.

1. There is no dominance or linear hierarchy for dogs. There is no Alpha or Top dog. Dogs are not constantly fighting for supremacy and are not trying to overthrow the Leader through aggression or dominance.

2. Dogs are very sociable and equipped with a huge array of body language postures that they use to avoid conflict. If a dog does get into a fight. It's usually to protect itself from an actual or perceived threat, to protect it's puppies or guard something it considers a valuable resource.

3. Most dogs enjoy the company of other dogs and will engage in play behaviour providing their welfare is good (physically, mentally and environmentally). Dogs will also happily play with humans they know and trust.