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Techniques based on learning theories

Traditional dog training

Also, this kind of training is usually targeted to dog obedience exercises, disregarding behavioral problems.

Detractors of traditional dog training argue that both the technique and the tools are cruel and violent. They also claim that the technique can cause dangerous collateral effects, such as fear biting and damages to the dog’s trachea.

On the other hand, if your dog lies down and you reward him after 10 seconds, he may not associate the action of lying down with the reward. He may think you gave him the treat because he was looking up, or moving his ears. So, you rewarded your dog but you didn’t reinforce the desired behavior.

Some people think that positive trainers never teach to the dog that a particular behavior is unacceptable. This could be the main advantage of this kind of training.

Other advantages are that this kind of training is easy to understand and fun to carry out. Besides, these techniques are not only focused on obedience exercises. Instead, they are widely used to solve behavioral problems.

Although very common, those claims are not true. 3. While choke collars are common tools, it seems that mixed techniques are friendlier to dogs than traditional training.

These techniques are more frequently used in sports that include attack/protection training, such as Schutzhund, Belgian Ring, Mondioring, etc.

Perhaps the main reason for the use of mixed techniques in those sports is that some behaviors, such as leaving an attack sleeve, are very difficult to train without negative reinforcement.

Although trainers who use mixed approaches also use positive reinforcement, they usually avoid using food as a reinforcer. Thus, you should achieve the higher hierarchy, the alpha dog status, in order to maintain a good relationship with your dog.

Others say the techniques were developed after studying the social behavior of dogs for several years.

Some of these people also tend to use non-violent procedures. However, the degree of violence in these techniques is highly variable and depends on the methods used by the trainer.

Perhaps further studies on canine ethology could lead to a better understanding of dog behavior. Meanwhile, ethology based techniques can’t provide clear and precise guidelines for dog training; even when there are some really successful “dog whisperers” like Cesar Millan and Jan Fennell.

While some have peas and others do not, there are others which combine two whistles into one, to have dual frequencies for producing different dog whistle sounds. The technical explanation of this is that a dog’s inner ear vibrates or resonates to the high frequency sound waves, but our ears do not. You should keep in mind that these whistles can cause damage to your hearing, so be careful as to how often and where you use them. You are right, I am talking about the therapy dogs who are trained to bring joy to all those who are sad and depressed, who are sick, and who need company when human company push them away. These dogs are trained to love and fill in positive energy in the minds and hearts of these sad and sick people. Gradually this concept of using dogs to bring joy in the hearts of the sick people, was carried on by a registered nurse from England, called Elaine Smith.