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.