Ty The Dog Guy On The Daily

In this post, I’d like to tell you about the lie of positive reinforcement. That felt kind of silly and overdramatic to write, but it’s an important topic. Dog training, like any industry, gets very political. People have specific views and wish to teach those views or force them on others. one of these views is the idea of positive reinforcement. Back in 1994, I started working for a dog trainer. I was just a teenager myself. Up until that point, the overwhelming majority of dog training had been aversive-based, which means that it used a lot of corrections, a certain level of sternness, and certain techniques that not even the toughest dog trainers today would use. But in 1995, we were a few years into a new movement. It went by a lot of different named: Positive Reinforcement Training, R+, Anti-Aversive Training, and others. At the crux of all these philosophies is the idea that we don’t correct the dog. No spray bottles, no training collars. Some even advocate never telling a dog “no.” Unfortunately,