why does everyone seem to feel that any negative stimulus is a correction and or is wrong?

dog training is about understanding the concepts of pressure how to apply it and when to release it to appropriate teach a concept. this holds true with teaching any behavior! a training aid is just that- whether it be some for of reward or a devise used to help create negative pressure. there are those people in all venues misuse both. however to reach a degree of reliability with any dog in any venue both positive and negative pressure are necessary. Though different dogs require varying degrees of pressure to learn.

Any negative reinforcer used is training is using the dogs natural escape and avoidance to reinforce an undesired behavior. any positive reinforcer is used to communicate to the dog it is engaging itself in an appropriate behavior.

so once again through pressure the dog is learning what is appropriate and what is inappropriate. The degree in which pressure is applied positive or negative can vary greatly from dog to dog!

take for example: the use of an ecollar. since it seems most are against them.

on a low level or appropriate level stim (shown by the dog reactions)  you apply continual pressure until the dog reaches a desire behavior such a sitting. pressure stops. behavior is marked. reward follows.

this is using the dogs natural escape and avoidance of negative pressure to find the correct position to relieve pressure. and achieved reward. the dog will start to offer this behavior much faster through more repetitions as it wants to escape or avoid negative pressure and achieve reward. this also teaches failure is not an option. following once the behavior is learned and in the latter stages of training in the proofing phase it will become a correction for refusal. through this you obtain a 100% reliable sit.

no one baked a dog or did anything harmful. but the dog understand implicitly that it must obey and and complete the command given by its handler.

nature provides wild animals with pressure. by understanding it how wild animals learn. so why is it any different for a dog though it is domesticated its primal instincts are still present and learns in the same manor.

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for the positive only crowd- if you are in the Maryland area i have 2 personal dogs i will gladly invite you to take a crack at. one is a hard gsd that came to me with a multiple bite record on humans and dogs whom was scheduled for the needle. and the other is a brutal mali bitch.

funny story- i had my mali bitch out at 9 months and was working her in a park. i was approached by a so called professional positive only trainer with her golden. This lady proceeded to ridicule me for have my dog on a training collar and that she could show me how to train a dog the "right way". Playing dumb i entertained this lady and allowed her to evaluate my dog. I was very quickly counseled that she was to dangerous to own and should be put down. After this i informed her i was also a professional trainer and that would never happen! Needless to say she is still alive and kicking and is one of my up and coming PSA dogs.

its also funny i receive at least a client or two every few months that some so called trainer has counseled them to euthanize their dog or they went to them for months with no results.



 

Well said Yoshy. Good trainers recongnize that every dog is different. There are various tools available such as a prong or ecollar, and the various methods of applying corrections mentioned in this post. It is up to the trainer to assess what tools are needed for each dog and at what level they need to be applied.

Your story about your Mali bitch is a good one, and provides a great example of how different dogs can be. I have a very hard female GSD. She can be extremely hard headed, especially when she is in high drive. Often a strong correction is the ony way to get her attention. She is my first true working dog and I had no clue how different they could be from the pets I have owned previously, including both GSDs and Dobermans. Strong corrections with an e-collar, pinch, or a good hard hit to the head does not deminish our relationship. She is by far the happiest dog I have ever had. Prior to this I might have agreed that some of the methods used could be considered cruel. For anyone participating on this post, unless you have walked in these shoes with this type of dog don't be so quick to judge, because like the "professional trainer" Yoshy described you are making judgements without truly understanding what you are judging.

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Sunsilver: "You can teach an old dog new tricks... Just keep an open mind, and give it a try."
If this is to me I'm not sure what you mean...perhaps read my first post again....like I said my training is motivational...I reward wanted behavior but correct negative behavior.  The dogs I've handled have worked nice for me and taken a correction well so never had to go to any extremes.