The Pitfalls Of Punishment: How Not To Fail Miserably At Dog Training

Punishment. It is the most demonized aspect of dog training. Here's the thing. You can't really train your dog without it. Because without it you only have things your dog will work for (and you may not even have that if your dog doesn't really want anything) and you have nothing your dog is working to avoid. 

We train using lots of praise and rewards. In the beginning. But over time, as the dog becomes more fluent we add punishment to make behavior reliable. We are also very proficient is using punishment to stop unwanted behaviors (like jumping) quickly. It's not anybody's favorite piece of the training, but it is the number one thing people need help with because..

Without a downside to our behavior, there is no reason to ever do anything we don't want to or avoid doing something that we want to do. It would be utter chaos and we would destroy our own lives if we lived that way, yet most people allow their dogs to live that way and only barely get by with managing their dog's behavior. 

But success lies in real change. And real change and real reliability are truly reliant on your ability to be able to implement punishment in a fair and consistent way. There is so much nonsense out there about how damaging punishment and corrections, are but it's all just imaginary harm. Done correctly, it is the thing that will finally get you the relationship you want with your dog. Stop unwanted behaviors, no yelling or anger. Get your dog to listen to you and come back when called, even around distractions. 

But you have to do it correctly. So how do you do that? We are talking about the most common mistakes we see people making every day. Have a listen!