Why Positive Reinforcement?

Reward-based, positive reinforcement methods have the least potential for any negative side effects on the dog and are the most effective in terms of the dog retaining the newly learned skills throughout her life. We now know that we do not need to show our dogs that we are the "alpha member," or that we need to be "dominant" over them. You can read more about the dominance fallacy here. LollyDog Trek & Train does not use leash jerks ("popping the leash"), prong collars, choke chains, physical "corrections," suspending the dog by the leash, alpha rolls, intimidating the dog, or any of the other punitive methods of dog training used 20 years ago.

Here's a way to understand positive reinforcement training, used on you: You enter an auditorium of 300 empty seats. You are guided to one particular seat and are promptly handed $100 by the usher when you sit down. You are led away and you then re-enter the auditorium. You are guided to the same seat as before and invited to sit down; when you do, you are handed $100 again. You are led away and then you re-enter… You are asked to pick a seat, any seat out of the sea of empty seats that lay before you, and sit down in it. The seat that has produced $100 twice has proven to be a winning seat for you thus far, so you voluntarily sit down in that one -- and you are rewarded by the usher yet again with another $100. You are now eagerly awaiting the next opportunity to be asked to take a seat, for you have discovered the winning seat... the "right" seat... the seat that comes with rewards! The $100 equivalent for the dog could be food, a favorite toy, a favorite activity, affection, or praise.

The name of the game is this: Show your dog what you want. Instead of thinking: "I don't want Rover to jump up on people when they approach," think more along the lines of: "I want Rover to sit when people approach." If Rover isn't shown what, exactly, you want him to do in the circumstance of people approaching, it becomes very difficult indeed to get him to "stop jumping up," because he doesn't know what you want him to do instead.

Dogs are among the most impressive, fascinating animals in the entire animal kingdom, largely due to the unique relationship they have with humans. Dogs process emotions very similarly to the way that humans do; this may be why they are so compatible to us. We now know that dogs can copy a human's actions when cued to "copy," once the dog has been trained to understand the concept of "copy." It was thought that only primates were capable of copying human actions when cued to do so; it turns out that dogs have this impressive ability as well. Dogs are capable of far more than most people give them credit for. They are capable of vast vocabulary comprehension, of impressive object discrimination, and even of verb and preposition discrimination. Just look at Chaser, the Border Collie who knows 1,000 objects by name!