Pain-Free Dog Training Method

There are a lot of different dog training methods out there and some of them might work for you and your dog and some of them might not. The good thing is, you could choose among these various methods and pick the one that would be best suited for yours and your dog’s needs. In the past, the use of pain has been prominent in dog training. Professional dog trainers believed that the only way to make a dog learn is to inflict pain whenever the dog performs poorly. If the dog is unable to learn the current trick being taught, the master would immediately punish the dog to enforce an association. Since dogs learn through association, it would associate its inability to perform the tricks well with pain and would try its hardest to perform to please the master and not receive the punishment.

This dog training method may be effective for some dogs but other dogs would only get scared of this method. Instead of associating the punishments and the pain with their mistakes, the dogs would learn to associate the punishments they receive with the whole training process itself. Once your dog does this, you would be unable to train it effectively. Pain can often build the strongest associations so once this gets established, it would be hard to break. You could condition your dog again and make it like the training process by doing positive reinforcement but that may take a while. To avoid this from happening, make sure that you never hurt your dog while training. Punishments could only lead to distrust—something that should never be present between dog and master.

As mentioned, there is another dog training method that would work for you and your dog. Positive reinforcement is a method that is scientifically proven so you would not have to worry about it being ineffective. You just have to be creative in providing treats and praises to make your dog learn. Remember that the treats or praises should always be enforced immediately after the dog performs the trick well. This would make it learn and build positive associations faster.