At Anything's Pawsible, we primarily use positive reinforcement methodology to get and maintain desired behaviors. Positive reinforcement is an often misunderstood concept and is often equated to baby talk, rules-free living, and bribery in order to get the dog to behave.

The goal of a positive reinforcement is to teach a desired behavior in a manner that does not create undue stress for the dog or damage his relationship with his owner. This is a mutually-beneficial format, such as working scheduled hours doing specific tasks to earn a paycheck. Behaviors are taught in a gradual, building-block fashion using small increments and rewarding the dog for correct choices. Incorrect choices are not physically punished. Physical punishment, particularly when even slightly mistimed or exaggerated, can cause stress in the dog which not only hinders the learning process (reluctancy to try to figure out what you want again) but builds a counter-productive negative association with both the individual administering the punishment as well as the behavior you're attempting to teach.

Rather than using physical punishments, we prefer to use very mild "punishments" such as withholding of the reward (which can be a food or toy, or a desired privilege). For example, we may want the dog to sit and wait while we open the door until we give him permission to go through the door. In this instance, the dog's most desired reward is not food - it is the opportunity to go outside. Assuming the dog already knows sit (if not, you should address that issue first), we would ask for a sit near the door and begin to open the door. If the dog moves or gets up during the proccess, the door is shut (withholding the reward) and we start over. The dog learns that the only way to gain access to his desired reward (going out the door) is to remain sitting until released. The dog lives in a "closed economy" - we have the opportunity to control access to their reinforcement and use it to reward behaviors we like.

An additional benefit to positive reinforcement methodology is it promotes a "thinking dog". It presents the dog with a problem (figuring out what you want them to do) that they want to figure out the solution to. They have no reason to fear pain or discomfort for being wrong, though they want to be right - so they will continue to try through failure. This provides excellent mental exercise for the dog, which is a much more efficient "workout" for the dog than the often-promoted advice of just wearing the dog out physically - though ALL dogs still need some physical exercise as well, how much depends on the dog. Dogs already understand the concept of working towards things that they find reinforcing - we are not creating problem dogs using this method, simply using the dog's natural tendencies to our advantage.

Often proponents of correction-based methodologies cite their method's success with police K9s or Schutzhund-type dogs to defend its appropriateness for the family pet. The problem with this argument is that those types of dogs are bred to be extremely tough mentally, extremely high drive, and typically with a very high pain tolerance. Those types of dogs are far more likely to hold up to lots of aversive corrections - but they also have a lot of drive for their reward (f.ex. getting to bite the sleeve). Your family pet almost always was not bred for those same traits to the same extent - making him far less resilient for discomfort or pain-filled training methods. We do not argue that discomfort (or pain) inflicting corrections are never necessary - simply that they are RARELY necessary, are far over-used (and often poorly applied), and therefore often counterproductive.

Below you'll find some informative links on the subject:
Clicker Training Myths
Positive Reinforcement Myths
The Dominance Theory Controversy
The Myth Of Alpha Dogs