Creative Dog Training

Positive vs. Negative Reinforcement

Your dog learns through experience. He can’t learn from reading a blog or watching a TV show!

He will repeat what works and stop what does not work. How many times does a dog touch a hot stove? Once — okay twice if he is a jack Russell!

Touching the hot stove is a form of negative reinforcement. The issue here is not positive verse negative but how to use positive reinforcement to encourage behavior that we want and negative (natural consequences) to discourage behavior that we do not want. It takes both to train your dog just as it takes both to train us humans. Negative reinforcement gets lots of bad press these days. My theory is simple — my dog can live in a world of all positive reinforcement the day I can. Dogs and humans need consequences for poor behavior choices.

Avoid using any type of negative reinforcement that ‘goes at ‘ your dog. Meaning striking, rolling, shaking, pointing, shouting, - these things cause your dog to become defensive and do more harm then good. The only forms of negative reinforcement that we use are collar corrections, a light touch or booby trapping.

Dogs learn when there is no fear and the consequence for his poor choice is fair and makes sense to him. Teach the behavior that you want with positive reinforcement — then discourage the behavior that you don’t want with the thoughtful use of negative reinforcement.

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