One of the most important books I ever read about dog training had nothing to do with dog training.
Sounds confusing but let me splain.
The author in the book hammered the point that to be successful you need to learn how to do what he called “accurate thinking.”
He went on to write that most people can NOT think accurately because emotion gets in the way and it shuts down their thinking.
Emotion overrides rational thinking and snap decisions and opinions are made without truly thinking everything through.
You would think it would be easy to think accurately but it is difficult and takes practice. I know because like most people, I have strong opinions and my heart beats out my brain.
But I do work very hard to try and think things through.
I am sharing this with you because just the other night I was working with a dog that was a real handful. This dog had given the owner eight stitches in her hand and had broken her rib.
She had already been through two classes with a different trainer and was at the end of her rope. She had to get this dog under control and turned to me for help.
This is where accurate thinking comes in. The ONLY way left to help this owner and dog was to step in and clearly use and teach the word, “NO!”
Which is EXACTLY what I did. I didn’t hurt or harm her dog but I did teach the word NO to STOP the behaviors that were out of control and physically hurting her.
I did NOT use a prong, choke or electronic collar but the dog did learn the word and guess what?
The out of control behaviors stopped and for the first time, the owner saw a glimmer of hope. She saw a chance to keep her dog, which she loved but could not control. In this situation, no amount of “positive reinforcement” was going to fix the behavior problems. She already tried that, twice.
Dog training has become very PC and using a negative consequence has become a sin among the “experts” but they have let emotion step in and control their decisions. But no matter which way you slice it, you CAN’T stop a behavior using positive reinforcement.
Redirecting, management, counter-conditioning will only go so far and only work for some dogs.
When you are faced with a dog like the one above, one of two things is going to happen: Teach the dog the word NO and stop the behavior or….
…..the dog will probably end up in a shelter and most likely….be put to sleep.
The dog above has a bite history which means the shelter would probably put the dog down because they CAN’T adopt the dog out.
I choose to help save the dog’s life by teaching NO.
And you know what? You can learn how I do it on The Dog Training Inner Circle. I have a video showing an out of control Goodlendoodle that also attended three “all positive” classes before she came to me.
She couldn’t stop her Goldendoodle from jumping and barking. 15 minutes later and problems she had been dealing with for months were…. gone.
Here’s where to go to get started:
Best,
Eric