Hitting spanking slapping popping

Well said. For me, with Squash it's just that he's SO busy in the house... pace, pace, pace, sit/stare, pace, pace, pace, sit/paw, paw, paw, paw, bark, pace, pace, stare, bark, paw. It gets on my nerves like crazy... the pacing I've actually learned to ignore but the pawing gets out of control sometimes. Lately I've been trying to ask myself "what is he getting out of this?" and turn it back onto myself and how my own behavior contributes instead of getting irritated with him. But some days it's a struggle and an "oh for the love of god!!!" might escape my lips from time to time.

ETA: To clarify, while I might verbally lose my cool sometimes, never anything physical, though. He just is what he is, there's no point in that kind of stuff in teaching him to settle down.

It's interesting to see what scares or shuts down other people's dogs.
For Kailey, yelling terrifies her. Two people can simply be having a heated but friendly debate in the house and she'll run to me for reassurance cuddles.
However, smacking and kneeing wriles her up for tug. If I were to yell while playing tug, she's run under the shed. Grab her scruff and knee at her? That's as much fun as a dog can have, in her mind.

The only one of my dogs that is soft is Chevelle. The rest are the complete OPPOSITE of soft. Lol.

It isn't fun, it is because they are male and haven't been taught it isn't acceptable around people. Mares and fillies don't do this but colts and geldings do because they are hard wired to play this way to prepare them to fight for mares as they mature. So they pop their shoulders into you and try to knock you off balance.........usually then followed by a quick nip or bite.
Same as how many geldings are mouthy, colts and studs as well. Funny how people give them a slap thinking it will stop the behaviour..........nope those kind (usually have a typically higher testerone levels for geldings), they have instigated the game and we comply by slapping them, game on in their mind. Now it is a sparring match.

me too i have threatened mine with a spanking "If you dont stop I'm gonna whip your ass!" but i never do it, I have struck another dog while trying to protect my then smaller pup from an attack while walking (dog came out of no where, no time to react)

I don't use physical punishment for training. We do play physically though. I don't use the leash either. I do, however, unfairly give the cold shoulder on occasions when I am frustrated with our training. Completely unfairly and I work hard to stop it from getting to that point. Thankfully it doesn't happen often... but I'd like it to never happen!

I have growled at Abby in the past for her reactivity (inappropriately and unnecessarily) which achieves nothing. I'm much more calm about things now and I have the tools to cope, but at the time it was a strong emotionally reaction based on a mixture of fear, frustration, embarrassment and sadness.

We are a fairly loud family, so yelling doesn't tend to bother either Grace or Abby, they associate it with play. My grandmother's whippet is very soft and the same rough and tumble treatment freaks him out, so I am more careful with him but at the same time, I'm trying to get him a little accustomed to it. A little OT, but Abby responds VERY strongly to my energy... the other day I found out about a job opportunity that was very exciting and I had a lot of happy and nervous energy and did a lot of pacing and thinking and rummaging through documents. She was immediately on edge. She's the same when I clean out my wardrobe - it's as if she associates it with upheaval. Grace wouldn't blink an eye if I had people come in a take every piece of furniture in the place... she'd still stay smiling lol.

IME the harder the dog the more reason to avoid physical punishment. I say this often, but I have a dog who’s prey drive resulted in him getting his teeth rearranged, then later he impaled himself and wound up with 5 stitches and a drain - also chasing. None of that had any effect on his chasing prey.

However, using a conditioned reinforcer (play with me), I can call him off a chase. I don’t think I would have achieved that kind of reliability with a physical aversive since this dog is seriously immune to physical punishment.

The only physical interaction I have with my dogs for training is then physical taps and pops I give Malyk. It's not corrective, nor is it punishment. He is very "touch interactive". I've been realizing that a lot about him lately.. He will understand "sit" better as a touch on his butt, rather than the word. "Shake" is a poke to his shoulder. "Lay down" is a pop underneath the chin. "Pay attention" is a pop across the muzzle. It doesn't scare him, it doesn't punish him... I guess you could call those his cues.

A lot of people have trouble training sit with a verbal or signal so they mould the dog by touching/pushing the butt down. TBH if they don't plan to trial ever and they aren't hurting the dog I don't care what they do.

oh... wait, are we counting touching for cues as hitting/slapping/spanking/whatever?

As the owner of a nearly blind nearly deaf dog... yah... it's kinda a necessity

Never in training, but have done so several times for management purposes... probably even could have done without it in those instances (it's never been a severe circumstance), but I was never overtly violent and I acted in fear/haste. Finn's never been affected by the few times it's happened. He's generally a pretty balanced dog anyway, not too hard/soft.

Only when playing devils advocate or back peddling.

My biggest issue used to always be that I when faced with an annoyance (like a dog barking non stop, pacing, etc..) I internalize.. I don't give the dog any chance to stop until all of a sudden I just SNAP.
I used to be the same way with human relationships lol I'm the girl that silently stews in her own anger and then looses it seemingly out of nowhere.

But, getting better! I now deal with the problem calmly while it's still small and I'm not that annoyed by it.. so there doesn't need to be a huge blow up lol

Luce's hardness was what taught me to train without physical punishment. Bless her. I owe that dog so much.

I'm the sort of person who becomes mortified if I accidentally step on a pet's tail, and have never hit one of my animals out of frustration, but I started training using leash jerks as corrections because I thought that was "the way you're supposed to do it." I regret this immensely as I think it made Tyrion's reactivity over dogs worse, and I'm grateful I very quickly realized it wasn't working and decided to try something else.

It's funny all the people mentioning play...Tyrion and I were playing this morning and he dropped to his side to kick his legs and bite at the air like he does with other small dogs when playing, so I playfully rolled him on his back, because that's one of the things my cats love in play (one of their hobbies is becoming the feline bear trap). In the back of my mind I thought, "I wonder if that was bad what I just did?" But he seemed to find it fun and it turned into a happy belly scratching session. I'm assuming dogs can sense the difference between doing things like that in an aggressive way, vs. just playing gently?

When they know you. I wouldn't wrestle a dog I didn't know to the ground, even in play unless I knew he knew it was play for sure. There are some dogs that could be playing one minute, but have had bad experiences and may construe your knocking them down as you being aggressive.

Your dog knows you are playing unless he's maladjusted. You're not angry or scary, he hasn't had any scary, violent punishment or "alpha" rolls done in anger and with force and domination, I assume. As long as you can read your dog's body language and expression and he is obviously playing with you...you've played like this before, he should be fine.

I play like that with my dogs. Of course, the little ones I have to do it gently, but when I had bigger dogs or my son's dog, I knock 'em around a little in play, roll them over and pretend. They paw at me, I scratch their bellies all in fun. There is no question in their mind that it's play. But they have no reason to think otherwise...no history of being knocked around in anger. Even if a dog has had bad treatment, chances are he'd still recognize that a person is playing vs. punishing. Mainly, only a dog with a history of really rotten treatment might get mixed up and be unsure.

Good to know! Yeah since Tyrion is so tiny, "rolling him over" is more gently pushing him more on his back while he's already on his side...and then scratching his belly which he looooves.

How do you give him cues when he’s too far away from you to reach out and uh... “touch�

I’m not. Hitting is not touching. Unless you’re the dog whisperer (*ducks and hides*).

I have an old man dog who is mostly deaf and blind unless the object is moving. I most certainly don’t “pop†him for anything! Tapping my foot on the floor helps him figure out where I am, and just by smell, I can use my hand as a lure for him to move him wherever I need him to go. The deafer he has gotten the more he checks in outside, so “come†has become me waving both hands in the air. He hustles right up to me. He also relies heavily on the other dogs which is really sweet to watch.

If Elsie's totally over-stimulated, saying, "Elsie, SIT," a a loudish clear voice and touching the tip of one finger very gently to the base of her tail is the thing that will get her to come back to earth and sit down (even if she's barking). That's not punishment, I don't think; she doesn't act like it bothers her, and there's really no way touching her gently there hurts her. But, I could see how you could do basically the same action and call it the same thing but do it in a painful way.

There's been a couple times I've lost my temper and gotten physical with Elsie in anger, and I really deeply regret them, both in a purely moral way and because she's the softest dog I've ever lived with, hands down.

Elsie is pretty hung up on me, and it makes me feel awful that I might fail to be as wonderful as she thinks I am. I adore that dog, and I want to be the person she thinks I am. Growing up, I had a terribly temper, and Elsie really is actually helping me overcome that, because getting angry with her doesn't work. It just crushes her.

That is just a whole bunch of molding/prompting, which is what a lot of ppl do when the dog doesn't response because the dog dosn't fully understand what is being asked of them. Person then 'helps' the dog. Then it turns into the cue. Can work, but it is a problem when off leash and the dog is at a distance from you. Same as a verbal, most dogs don't respond well to a verbal that hasn't been taught correctly. See it all the time (as I am sure other trainers here have as well). Owner says sit, no response, Sit, no response, SIT!, no response, SIT!!!!! (then the molding often happens), dog finally sits. What the person doesn't understand is that the dog is waiting for all those repeats and/or the molding because that is how it was taught. Which is the fundimental flaw of using a verbal to get an action when training a new behaviour. Instead of adding the verbal to the behaviour when the animal does it, also the best way to get an immediate response to 1 verbal cue with no repeats. And unless they retrain it, they will never get a dog to sit (or whatever they taught) immediately and quickly on 1 cue. Not the dogs fault.