Positive Reinforcement : Part 1

“Whoever said you can't buy happiness forgot little puppies.”

You are your puppy’s protector. You are his parent, his friend, his guardian. His teacher, his mentor, and his playmate. You are his caretaker, his role model, and his best friend.
A relationship with a dog is unlike any other between man and animal. You have a huge responsibility on your hands, and if you contribute to your dog’s life, you will find he can contribute to your life and enrich it in profound ways.
But like any relationship, whether between human and human or animal and human, it needs to be based on trust and built on communication. Puppy training is Communication 101 for your furry friend, and will establish how your relationship will go for the next 12 to 15 years of your dog’s life. If you take this responsibility seriously, and use the tactics outlined in this book, you will be rewarded with a loving, trusting, beautiful relationship. In this Post, you will learn about positive reinforcement, the guiding philosophy of our puppy training.
What is Positive Reinforcement?
Positive reinforcement is a training philosophy that relies on positive rewards to reinforce behavior.
What this means is that when your puppy does something good, like sitting on command or eliminating outside, you reward him with something important to him, that he desires.
Puppies have simple needs. They like food, praise, petting, and spending time with their human. They love playtime, and frequent naps. The easiest and one of the most rewarding items for a puppy or any dog is a food treat. So for training your puppy, we recommend always reinforcing behavior with a special food treat.
Only use a treat that is safe for dogs. Many “human” foods like chocolate, grapes, raisins, avocado and more are dangerous and even lethal for canines. Google any human food before feeding to your puppy. You can use small bits of apple, carrot, or dog treats you buy from your local pet shop. Don’t be shy about also sprinkling in praise and pets in addition to food treats when rewarding for good behavior.
In positive reinforcement training, it is best to use a clicker, whenever your puppy performs a good behavior, click and reward with a treat.
What is Negative Reinforcement, or Punishment?
There are two more methods of animal behavior training in addition to positive reinforcement. Punishment is adding a stimulus your dog doesn’t like to deter him from bad behavior. Negative reinforcement is removing a stimulus your dog doesn’t like to reward him. In both cases, you are doing something to your puppy that causes him discomfort, pain or distress.
Building a relationship with a puppy is even more delicate than building one with a dog. Whereas a dog with even just a few years of experience knows a lot about the world, a puppy is just learning about it. How you treat your puppy will impact him or her for the rest of their life. Just like children are more impressionable than adults, you need to be a safe and gentle guide and teacher for your puppy.
If you break trust with your puppy by using punishment or negative reinforcement in training, your puppy will fear you, and become skittish, nervous and maybe even agitated and aggressive. Even gentle thwacks or spanks are adding an element of physical force that can make your dog sensitive to someone touching his rear-end, or generally nervous about human interactions.
We recommend you stay 100% away from any sort of training that uses shock collars, prong collars, physical punishment, or anything resembling making your dog uncomfortable.
Go with your gut, and only do what makes you comfortable with your puppy, even if you come across dog trainers or puppy training materials that encourage punishment. At the end of the day, you are the one who is spending your life with your puppy, and you have to answer for your behavior choices.
We recommend only using positive reinforcement. If you do, you are laying, brick-by-brick, the foundation for a healthy, trusting and awesome relationship with your dog.