Pure positive training, why it fails.

Some owners and trainers in the dog training industry believe that you cannot and should not ever correct behaviors a dog exhibits. Unfortunately, this methodology does not create a consistent and reliable base. It creates confusion and will cause more harm than good.

What is the problem with positive only training?

The main issue is this, what happens when your dog does something wrong? Do you reward it, let it continue, or do nothing? Just like when our children disobey, what do we do about it? We discipline our children to prevent the unwanted and dangerous actions from happening again like that time your child almost ran into the road. This method of training while it may "work" for a small "harmless" Shiatzu, will not work for a 90lbs German Shepherd.

Pure positive dog training is one amazing way to put your dog into a shelter or other life-threatening situation. We do not beat around the bush about issues like this at TNK9T. Our job is to stop dogs from ending up in shelters.

If the laws we had only gave us positive rewards for doing good but gave us no consequence for bad decisions such as killing or harming another individual, our society would become an anarchy faster than your dog bolts out the door.

The same applies to dogs, while yes, we should absolutely reinforce the good behaviors, what happens with the negative ones?

The result of positive only training

This video from world renowned dog trainer Tom Davis puts into perspective what exactly pure positive dog training causes for dogs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgGV1_BdE-o

In this video the Client Tom is working with describes how pure positive training has affected her dog forcing her to go through 6 trainers before actually achieving any results.

What do we practice at true north k9 Training?

The approach we take is 95% positive reinforcement/negative punishment, and 5% positive punishment/negative reinforcement.

In a perfect world, we want to not have to correct our dogs, just like we want people not to do bad things. But the world does not work that way.

At True North K9 Training you will find that Kali, our in-house German Shepherd lives a very happy and nurtured life. Regardless of the narrative that some put into people's minds that correcting bad behavior is wrong. Kali does get corrected, because if she doesn't, she will learn bad behaviors. Which for a 90lbs full grown GSD are not tolerable.