Niki Tudge shares some important information about the misguided advice of “ignoring unwanted behavior”.
Ignoring a problem behavior is just one part of the equation; at the same time, an incompatible or alternative behavior must be reinforced (c) CanStock Photo/websubstance
By Niki Tudge
Last week, while perusing my Facebook news feed while I drank my morning coffee, I came across a link to a blog advocating for force-free dog training methods. This short blog had a video link which was showing a dog trainer punishing a dog for a problematic behavior. In summary, the positive reinforcement trainer was quoted as saying “encouraging the behaviors we want and ignoring behaviors we don’t, is the correct and positive way to train your pup without using physical force”.
I always try to read blogs and articles from a dog perspective. A perspective that probably has little, if any, knowledge of learning theory or the principles we base our dog training on. If I were a dog and I read the aforementioned blog I would wonder, do I ignore my dog’s jumping, snapping, growling and pulling? How is that going to work? What am I actually accomplishing? I would think that I would be doing less to help train my dog than I am doing by “correcting” them. Why would these ‘force-free’ methods be more effective than the methods I am currently using?
