BostonBanker said:
Wow, my first time posting on a thread like this. I'm a little scared, but want to respond.
First off, I adopted a 1 year old rescue in February. And since then, I have never used physical punishment. Occasional verbal corrections when she is in a dangerous situation, such as when I taught her not to go under a horse's feet, but that's it. I taught positive dog classes for two years, and had a mix of students who "got it" right away, some who walked in the first night with their choke chains, and one memorable one who came in crying after a trainer hung the dog on it's choke until it passed out. I never met a dog who couldn't be trained positively, but met several who could have NEVER been trained with force.
This is, I think, one of the biggest reasons to go with all positive training. We've established that all dogs are different; nobody is going to disagree, right? So how do you know how much punishment is enough? There is enormous risk to going overboard with punishment. Dogs can shut down, turn aggressive, or have physical damage. I don't see any risk to screwing up with positive training, other than your dog (or you) has to try again, or maybe the dog gets some extra reward. I've worked with animals my whole life; I have very good timing for rewarding, or correcting if I chose to do so. But I'm not taking that risk.
I have a dog because I love them. I don't want to hit her, roll her, or pull on her, and I don't have to. With purely positive training, I called my little hunting dog off of a rabbit she was chasing the other night, and got an instant recall with an out of control "stub wag". I'm **** proud of her, and very happy that I didn't have to use force.
First off, I adopted a 1 year old rescue in February. And since then, I have never used physical punishment. Occasional verbal corrections when she is in a dangerous situation, such as when I taught her not to go under a horse's feet, but that's it. I taught positive dog classes for two years, and had a mix of students who "got it" right away, some who walked in the first night with their choke chains, and one memorable one who came in crying after a trainer hung the dog on it's choke until it passed out. I never met a dog who couldn't be trained positively, but met several who could have NEVER been trained with force.
This is, I think, one of the biggest reasons to go with all positive training. We've established that all dogs are different; nobody is going to disagree, right? So how do you know how much punishment is enough? There is enormous risk to going overboard with punishment. Dogs can shut down, turn aggressive, or have physical damage. I don't see any risk to screwing up with positive training, other than your dog (or you) has to try again, or maybe the dog gets some extra reward. I've worked with animals my whole life; I have very good timing for rewarding, or correcting if I chose to do so. But I'm not taking that risk.
I have a dog because I love them. I don't want to hit her, roll her, or pull on her, and I don't have to. With purely positive training, I called my little hunting dog off of a rabbit she was chasing the other night, and got an instant recall with an out of control "stub wag". I'm **** proud of her, and very happy that I didn't have to use force.
I agree with you as well that physical punishment is a risky business.
I've yet to go to a bite case where a dog was trained using only positive reinforcement with negative verbal marker.
You should be very proud of your dog retracting from her rabbit chase, I'm not surprised that you did it with positive training...just means you know what you're doing. Good for you!!