Telling a dog off, and wellbehaved dogs.

[Nettleskeins]

Since taking my puppy out for walks I have met a few people with older dogs, giving me "tips" on how to stop bad habits. Including, pulling sharply on leash to make dog stay to heel, spraying water in dog's face when it barks at cats or other dogs, telling crossly dog to get down when it jumps up when pup so never jumps up on the table eats food etc. Aversive methods. Dogs seem happy and contented, but could this be because most of the time the owner is actually soppy and loving and has forgotten that their empathy with dog outweighs the brief strictnesses or basically dog is older and now behaves better anyway/has worked out what is acceptable.

All the training I read and receive in person mentions the importance of positive behaviour methods on puppies, but do most people resort to tugging on the lead, shouting Leave it or Get Down and NO.

Is so called"bad" behaviour basically developmental and if you can get through it, puppy will usually turn out fine if he likes you,gets enough sleep exercise and play and wants to please you, without aversive/corrective methods?

There a number of different methods, people will pick what appeals to them I suppose.

Hm, teaching to settle in bed would definately work for me.
Treats into the kitchen not so much.
Big dog, teeny house.

Because I read your post too fast and thought it was the visitors throwing the treats.

Personally, it is not for me.
But I’m glad it works for you.

Omg Doggy you remind me why I prefer training dogs and also related to my previous comment about who trained you as they have really confused you re positive training.

Reward the behaviour you want......

You are concentrating on stopping unwanted behaviour - you are using negative punishment which will work BUT will not teach the behaviour you do want - it is confusing for the dog. It takes the dog longer to understand what you do want from them.

Reward 4 feet on ground - easy for the dog to understand, easy to achieve and no arguments happy stress free dog and owner

Takes to and hides thread

Well that is just lovely.
You remind me why I prefer dogs to people..

So unbelievably rude on the basis that someone that dare do things differently to you.

Pretty much everyone uses negative punishment OverFedStanley when they don’t reward the dog’s mistake. Every dog I’ll make a mistake and every dog will fail to gain a treat as a result. Many people associate a command with it like ‘try again’ that prompts the dog to try a different behaviour. Nothing wrong with negative punishment in this instant. Or keeping a dog on the lead until he settles and then releasing them to run free, again negative punishment and nothing wrong with that.

Dogs that have worked for a while with the clicker are perfectly capable of offering different behaviours to see what works without getting confused.

Elisabeth Kershaw trained me, Karen Pryor trained her, should you wonder.