Steer Clear of Over-Punishing Your Dog
There are some people who feel that fear is the best motivator – period. If you want someone to act in a certain way and eschew other behaviors, you will often use the “stick” approach. This works in a fairly simple way – you make clear what you want to happen, and threaten negative results if the outcome is
not to your taste. If the outcome then falls short of what you had hoped, you follow through with your threat. The person then becomes aware that your threat was genuine, and resolves to take you seriously. The same process is often applied to training a dog. If the dog transgresses in some way, it will be punished. Often this will take the form of a physical punishment such as striking the dog. If this method is applied frequently enough, it will filter through that the behavior and the punishment are linked. Eventually, or sooner, the dog will make the link in its brain and cease the negative behavior. However, it may also come to see you as its punisher rather than its friend. The key is to not over-punish your dog. It is simply not accurate to say that fear is the greatest motivator. Anyone who has seen the effects of excessive physical punishment on a dog cannot fail to see how the results can be hugely negative. It may resist the instinct to transgress, but equally it will not want to do anything at all. And a dog which behaves well, but loses its vitality, says more about its trainer than anything else. Some people over punish because the owner is the one with the problem not the dog. When the owner lacks the knowledge of how to train it comes out in frustration and over punishing the dog. Neither one will get anything out of these types of training sessions. The dog will be confused on what he is suppose to do because you punish him all the time and you will always be frustrated because you can't your dog to do learn the right behavior. If this is your problem STOP training and hire a professional. Training is never suppose to be a bad experience for either party involved. |