If you have answered, “you repeat the command” or “you get a better reward so the dog will listen”. Or even  say, “just because the dog has responded perfectly 99 out of 100 times the same command was given, doesn’t mean he knows it.”

The big shocker here is that people are being fed inaccurate information in that you should never say the word “no” to your dog, much less give him a well measured and properly timed correction. When what you want is a happy and stable dog you strive for a balance of both positive and negative consequences in your training just the same as what you have to deal with in life. Its simple called “learning experience”

Why would you repeat the command. If the command is “sit” it is “sit” not SIT SIT. The dog has sat 99 times before on the first command.

A bigger reward ? So lets say we up the reward from kibble to a piece of fritz for a sit which by the way is a simplistic easy command for a dog to follow. What do we offer when you ask for a sit stay out of sight for 30 minutes ? Rump Steak ? What if the dog finds coming back to you more rewarding than the piece of meat.

The dogs I train perform a sit a minimum of 250 times while learning . Do you not think that the dog would know what sit means after 250 repetitions of it? And when it has sat 100 times every time I ask it and then it doesn’t what do we do?

Lets get drunk..

Most of us have done it. Why do it ? Because its a self rewarding behaviour. While your drunk everything is great.But alas when people drink bad things eventually happen. You say things you shouldn’t,do things you wouldn’t normally do,maybe get sick or just plain embarrass them selves or others. Yet we still do it. We learn slow but forget fast.The length of pleasure while drunk far outweighs the sporadic and sometimes seemingly random negative outcomes.Mostly these outcomes aren’t too bad. Apologise for being silly or clean up the vomit take a panadol for your hangover. But all in all the consequences aren’t that bad. Providing nothing really bad happens , roll on the next time and lets all get drunk again.

But if the consequences were harsher and happened every time you got drunk would you think about getting drunk next time?If you needed your stomach pumped the next day after drinking would you drink? The bad consequence must outweigh the short lived pleasure from a self rewarding experience.If it is the action of the self rewarding experience will stop. If an aversive experience is applied consistently and far enough outside our comfort zone we learn quickly. AS DO DOGS.

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