[QUOTE=grayarabpony;7229277]
Ahem, what matters is how the dog acts with HER. The dog may still growl at other people. What the heck? Dogs don’t all act the same with different people. [/QUOTE]
The issue for me is that I absolutely expect my dogs to behave the same way to every person in most situations. Me “paddling” my dog so that he’s scared/respectful enough of me to jump off the couch when I come close isn’t going to help matters when someone else gets near the couch. And yes, I went through a short period where my younger dog would sometimes growl if you tried to pick him up off the couch or chair. I didn’t need him to think “Oh, here comes that ‘pack leader’/scary person/raving lunatic, I better get up” when he was on the chair; I needed him to be completely fine with anyone from me, to my mother, to my nephew grabbing his collar and pulling him off the chair.
So I taught him that people grabbing his collar and dragging him around was a fun game. That people picking him up in their arms (which he didn’t like either) meant cookies were incoming. If you hold your hand out anywhere near his neck, he THROWS his collar into your hand because this is how the game starts. Problem solved. I have zero concerns about people moving him around now, even if I’m not in the room to give him the evil eye as ‘pack leader’.
He’s an odd, touchy little dog. I think he could easily have become nasty and snappy in the wrong home, and he’s the type of dog that I think would absolutely take corrections, back off and internalize until the day that he finally snapped. Instead he’s turned into a funny, confident little sport dog who spends his waking hours looking for an opportunity to earn rewards. He’s safe with kids. He’s fun to live with.
And honestly, I just don’t like hitting my dogs. It’s not why I own them. It doesn’t create the type of dog with which I like living and working. There is no doubt in my mind that positive punishment works in a lot of situations - it’s why it still persists despite the other options out there. I think ignoring that fact does nothing to benefit those promoting positive reinforcement based training. Punishment works.
There are downfalls to both types of training. Punishment (done correctly) works quickly to stop behaviors. Downsides: It stops behaviors, creating dogs who are less willing to try new things (maybe a positive to some people). You do not always control what the dog will associate the punishment with (true with reward training as well, but less fall out). The fence collar above is a good example. Another is the experience of someone I used to work with, who is one of the best trainers I’ve ever known; she used to work with marine animal shows. Her dog was starting to growl and rush the door when people came over, so she used a shock collar (this was a long time ago). Rather than “when I charge the door it hurts” the dog clearly processed it as “when people come to the door it hurts”, and for the rest of his life, they had to put the dog away when people came over, because his aggression to people coming into the house just escalated.
Positive trained dogs can also have downsides. Especially with the ones who are very savvy to shaping, you can unknowingly reward behaviors without realizing what it is the dog thinks the reward is for; the difference is that when they are seeking a cookie rather than looking to avoid a punishment, the result is less likely to include aggression. You can get dogs like my younger dog who constantly try to play you like a slot machine, looking for reinforcement. When I’m standing around a parking lot talking to someone and he starts to back up their legs into a handstand because sometimes that means a reward, I think it is hysterical - not everyone may think the same way. You may get paired behaviors that you don’t realize, because the dog is trying to work out what gets the reward - in teaching my dog to bark on cue, I didn’t process that he was pairing it with down, so now he can’t down without barking or bark without downing (winter project to fix that). A lot of people don’t want a dog who seeks interaction. They want a houseplant that sits quietly on a bed until they want to do something with the dog. A positively trained dog can absolutely learn to do that, but it is often something you need to make a point to train/reinforce.
At the end of the day, for me, it comes down to what I can live with, both in terms of the dogs’ behavior and my own. I’ve been in one seminar situation where the trainer encouraged much more correction based training than I’ve ever done with either of my dogs (and I’m not talking smacking or much in the way of physical corrections). I saw my confident young dog start to shut down. He hid in a tunnel at one point. I went home practically in tears because I felt I had failed him by continuing to participate. That’s not what I want in a dog.
