A recent discussion on a dog training email list got me to thinking about some issues that are currently tearing the dog training world apart.

The comment from the email list was from an obedience judge with over 30 years of judging experience. She was commenting on the general lack of obedience that is currently being seen in competition level dogs and wondered if this was due to the changes in training methodology over the past 15 to 20 years.

She felt that even the highest examples of dogs…those trained to compete in the highly disciplined sport of competitive obedience were no longer able to perform reliably because of a lack of consequences.

I have to agree with her on this one. However a lot of people went on to say that dogs should not be trained with consequences…. they should only be rewarded for good behaviour and all bad behaviour should be ignored. Saying no to your dog is not acceptable. One responder even went so far as to suggest that we employ standards from the Children’s Aid and make it illegal to even walk a dog with the leash pulled tight.

Perhaps this might work if you are single, don’t work, don’t have anything else do and there are no children in the house and you devote your entire day to training the dog.

Somehow I just can’t imagine this working for a working mom with 3 kids. Having a dog around that is constantly knocking over a two year is going to be a big problem if all mom can do is reward it for being good.

These trainers make claims that training dogs with consequences are going to cause aggression in dogs. Balderdash! The opposite is the case. In a lifetime of training dogs and using consequences that has never been the case here.

It is also true everywhere in Nature. Consequences for making bad choices are part of everyday life, no matter if you are a bad driver or a deer crossing a busy highway. Even among barn yard animals there exists a hierarchy and a consequence will occur if a certain horse ventures too close to the best hay or grain.

A mother with 3 little kids and a dog can afford the time to ignore bad behaviour waiting for good behaviour to occur. She needs the behaviour to stop in a timely manner. If we as dog trainers fail to provide her with a solution we are failing both her and the dog. We will leave her with no other choice but to re-home the dog or surrender it to the shelter.

Insisting on good behaviour from your dog will not cause aggression in your dog. Saying no to your dog will not cause aggression or destroy its self confidence.

Balance - A harmonious or satisfying arrangement or proportion of parts or elements, as in a design.

We strive for balance in our lives. We balance our jobs with our recreation time. Excesses are often considered undesirable. We seek a balanced diet, a balanced exercise program. We often tolerate extremes for a period of time but eventually sanity prevails and we return to the middle of the road.

Should it not be so with dogs? I believe that it should be. It is my firm belief that dogs need to be trained in a balanced manner. This article will be about how I train my dogs and my clients dogs. I have had enormous success with using both food training and correction type training.

Each individual dog trainer is the product of their own experiences, resulting in a potpourri of methods, tools and theories. Some trainers will call themselves totally positive, some are pure positive and some are traditional. Some will call another trainer’s methods abusive while some will call the all reward method confusing for both dog and owner.

Often in these situations, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. So it is with dog training. The middle is balanced.  I personally think that there is something of value in all styles of training.

Many traditional dog trainers have come to see the value of better timing in their training and the addition of food in some situations. They have created  balance in their approach.

My belief is that a good quality obedience program opens the lines of communications both ways between canine and human. There has to be balance in the communication. The owner does have to make an effort to be clear to the dog about what is expected from the dog. The dog has to be prepared to pay attention to what the owner is trying to say.

For some dogs it is their lack of attention to the owner that creates most of the problems. You can never train any dog if you do not have attention from the dog.

Basic obedience training should create attention. With this attention the dog is primed for learning new things. For the dog this is the stage where it begins to learn the ‘rules’. It learns impulse control. It learns how to behave in a variety of situations with distractions. As it learns, it learns to pay more attention and it learns even more rules. Learning the rules gives the dog more self confidence and better behaviour. It also gives the dog more freedom. You would be more confident taking a dog that is well behaved with you on walks and on vacations. This gives the dog more and more freedom and results in a much more pleasant life for both you and your dog.

Recently there was a discussion on the CAPPDT email list about what constitutes a correction. I understand that many people are very opposed to a correction and feel that waiting until the dog “offers the right behaviour” is the way to go and perhaps in many situations this will work just fine. However time is a precious commodity in today’s world where moms and dads juggle full time jobs and kids with soccer, hockey and piano lessons. The dog is often very low on the totem pole. They need to have a full dialogue with their dog that includes all 4 quadrants of learning. Corrections should always be ‘just right’ and never cause fear. Sometimes the most subtle correction will work just fine and for some dog a firmer correction will be required. Rules and discipline must also be very fair and consistent.

I often use an analogy with my own clients. You and your dog need to play by the rule book…but it works best if the owner writes the rule book. If the rule book is the dog’s then you are both in trouble.

Those dog trainers who say that saying ‘no’ to your dog is going to ruin your dog and result in a fearful quivering mass are lying to you. In my life time I have trained hundreds of dogs as have other trainers I know. Not a single fearful dog has resulted. Because the training was fair!

 There is no balance in only saying ‘yes’ to your dog. It is a failure to communicate with your dog. Only saying yes gives your dog only half the information that it needs to survive in the world it lives in. You owe it to your dog to give it a balanced life and more self confidence….give him some clear rules applied with kindness, firmness and praise. Your dog will love you for it.