Tag: permissive

Wherein a Dog Trainer Demolishes Deregulation

Humans are hardwired to punish, and punishment is very effective at stopping undesired behavior. Many people believe that you have to put punishment on dogs using coercion, fear or intimidation to train them. This is called Positive Punishment.

The only problem with positive punishment is that there are often unintended consequences that arise the the use of it, sometimes these unintended consequences create more problems than they solve.

Positive trainers believe that reward and repetition and removal of good things (negative punishment) is better at creating, modifying and maintaining behavior than fear and intimidation.

This is sometimes a hard sell to clients. Some people will simply never be able to process and internalize the concepts of positive training, and that’s OK. We just send them to someone who employs fear and intimidation to train dogs. No big deal.

Ironically, the people most likely to be unable to accept positive training are the very people who are likely to believe that positive reinforcement and voluntary regulation will work for controlling institutional, human behavior, and that punishing them for bad behavior is wrong.

I have no idea why this is the case, but my experience tells me it is.