Just finished reading an excellent article on DogStarDaily with an important consideration on punishement. It was written by Collignon Catherine and you can find the whole article here: http://dogstardaily.com/blogs/must-we-punish-our-dog

I'll just give a breif summary:

The blog starts off by establishing that many of the behaviors that we want dogs to do would most likely never happen if they were out in the wild, and conversely they wouldn't stop certain behaviors that we don't appreciate because its a natural instinct (like prey drive). But being that dogs live in our households there are certain things that we have to teach them to do and other things we must teach them NOT to do. This is where training comes in, but is realistic to think that we can train with all positive and dog friendly methods?

We know that there are certain things that we can do to increase or decrease a behavior. Rewards are one way to increase it and punishements are a way to decrease it. However punishment comes in two different forms, positive and negative. To illustrate it she puts out an example:

A dog that jumps on his owner when he has a ball. From here we look at two ways the owner tries to stop the behavior:

Positive Punishement - The dog jumps and the owner knees the dog in the chest. The behavior stops BUT it is most likely that the motivation to keep playing also stops. The dog might now be a little suspicious of its owner as well and may not want to play anymore.

Negative Punishment - The dog jumps up when he sees that the owner has a ball, the owner doesn't like the jumping so he turns away and the ball dissapears. The behavior stops BUT the motivation to play is most likely still there. The relationship between the dog and the owner is also not negatively effected.

The the main questions stands to be: Are you reprimanding the way the dog interacts with you or the interaction itself? The former means that you don't like the jumping the latter means that you don't like the fact that the dog wants to play with you.

Something interesting to think about when it comes down to P- and P+.

very interesting food for thought!

So using the info above, what would it be called if you tell the dog "NO" and make it sit in front of you? Then when it is sitting, you tell it "Good Dog" ...

Betterdog4u wrote:

So using the info above, what would it be called if you tell the dog "NO" and make it sit in front of you? Then when it is sitting, you tell it "Good Dog" ...

I think that falls under the category of counter conditioning not positive or negative punishement, the former is actually quite effective and I like to recommend it

Betterdog4u wrote:

So using the info above, what would it be called if you tell the dog "NO" and make it sit in front of you? Then when it is sitting, you tell it "Good Dog" ...

Steven_L wrote:

[I think that falls under the category of counter conditioning not positive or negative punishement, the former is actually quite effective and I like to recommend it

I ve actually had ppl try to tell me that just using a loud "NO" is Negative Punishment to which I always say, No its not!

Betterdog4u wrote:

Betterdog4u wrote:

So using the info above, what would it be called if you tell the dog "NO" and make it sit in front of you? Then when it is sitting, you tell it "Good Dog" ...

Steven_L wrote:

[I think that falls under the category of counter conditioning not positive or negative punishement, the former is actually quite effective and I like to recommend it

I ve actually had ppl try to tell me that just using a loud "NO" is Negative Punishment to which I always say, No its not!

Hehe no I don't believe it is, I mean unless your dog is SUPER SUPER sensitive and it considers a verbal remprimand like "No" an adverse stimulus it might fall under the category of positive punishment