I know I'm rambling, but there are many areas in which I think this positive reinforcement thing falls short. I totally agree that positive reinforcement is a great tool to use – if and when you want to train your dog, when you want it to learn a behavior that is unnatural for the dog. But there are areas where I believe positive reinforcement is completely unnecessary, and I will try to clarify where, when, how and why.
There is a big difference on having a well-trained dog and having a functioning dog. A well-trained dog can be fantastic in training- and the competition plan, but do not know how to behave in social contexts. A working dog may not be able to string commands, but understands how to behave in furnished rooms, together with people and animals, and follows his human without questioning why.
For me comes the working dog always to be more important than the well-trained dog. And now we come to something that at least I find extremely interesting, not to mention important.
Not everyone has prerequisites to naturally become a leader. By that I mean (still!) not this dominance thing and the whole ballet that so many dislike, but rather the ability to claim their own space, to own space, to take place, to be direct and clear in your communication with the dog to avoid confusion, to mean what you say and say what you mean, and so on. There is a difference in the expression dominance in the sense that many people back down, and what I mean by leadership.
In my world it is not enough to be the one who decides when the food is served, when it's time to go for a walk and so on, to call myself a leader. In my world, it is required that I only through my presence, my way of behaving, make me understood, makes my dog follow me. It has nothing to do with either anger or violence, but solely through awareness of myself and how my dog reacts to who I am and what I do.
To do understood, you need to be direct and clear in your communication with the dog, and you need to communicate in a way that the dog understands. You also need to mean what you say, and say what you mean. In the same way that there are people who are less good at communicating with each other, there are people who do not naturally manage to be direct and clear with their dogs. The ability to be that is something these people need to practice – and there is nothing wrong with that.
What I'm talking about What I'm so hot for is what's to come before dog training. My own ability to get my dog to take me seriously. And to be too clear into absurdum – it's still not about being angry or violent. It's about having self-awareness, self control, balance and stability, to be able to be an anchor for your dog. If you fail to do this, it will be more difficult to get the dog to hear and understand what you are asking of it, regardless of the type of training you are doing.
I am convinced that there are people who deal with positive reinforcement, who believe that you can/must/should train every single behavior you want, or for that matter, change. Personally, I think it's absolutely insane. For me, it's more about using body language and the ability to demand and own space, communicate to my dog what it is I want.
As example; today when I handed Lilo over to her mother, Boyo realized that he wanted to dig in a hole he had started in a lawn. Instead of throwing candy at him, I demanded the space above the started hole (such as i; I set foot there) and without giving the matter further thought, Boyo moved without question – he just understood what I wanted. My question is; what is most effective?
Considering which attached the whole thing with positive reinforcement has here in Sweden, I don't think there are very many people who even want to consider the benefit and pleasure of changing their attitude to their relationship with and to dogs. Personally, I can think that you miss an incredible amount, when you spend so much time and energy on training instead of communicating.
And speaking of that; again to further clarify the absurdity… What I'm talking about is more about that manage dogs than to train dogs. There is a huge difference between these two concepts.
To handle one dog is about how to move around the dog, how to approach a dog, how to talk to/to it, how to pick up the dog, how to project yourself, how aware one is of one's own strength and one's own weaknesses, and so on.
To train one dog is about teaching it things that are largely unnatural for it in one way or another (either the act itself, or the context in which the act is performed).
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It is due of this I think it is so incredibly interesting to see how dogs communicate with each other. They spend no time training each other in social interaction. They use body language to express what is ok, and what is not ok. If we humans could take after the dogs to a greater degree when we spend time with them, I am convinced that we would have fewer problems with them.
Men; that’s just me… We are all different, we see the relationship with dogs differently, and that must be ok, that with.