The Importance Of Positive and Negative Feedback In Dog Training.
Question: How many people talk to their dog when taking them for a walk on a lead?
I would hazard a guess that not many do given the number of people I see either talking on their phones, texting, walking along in a daydream or marching at high speed to get the walk over and done with as soon as possible because they have other things to do. It’s not often I see any kind of positive interaction between owner and dog. Of course, not everyone is like this but there are many people who are.
The fact is, too many people see taking a dog for a walk as ‘dead’ time, something they have to do simply because the dog needs it’s walk. They don’t see it for what it could be, an ideal time to train and get to know your dog better. After all, it’s just you and your dog and when else are you going to find a continuous amount of time during your day when you have no other demands on you?
The other thing I’ve noticed is that generally, the only feedback dogs tend to get when on lead is negative. The dog pulls, the dog gets told off. This is sometimes the only time the dog is spoken too on a lead walk, when it does something wrong. But how many people actually let their dog know when he’s doing something right like walking nicely?
If we give negative feedback then to create the right balance, we need to give positive feedback otherwise how else is your dog going to know the difference between the behaviour we like and the behaviour we don’t like. Just like teaching a child, there has to be a balance between the carrot and the stick. We reinforce and encourage to enable the child to understand they are on the right track and tell and show when they get it wrong. Teaching a dog is no different to this.
For instance, dogs respond well to our tone of voice and they have excellent hearing. If we talk softly and encouragingly to the dog when he is trotting along next to us then the dog will learn that this is the behaviour we like because we are letting him know. It also has the benefit of teaching the dog to listen and focus more on us instead of just looking around and making his own entertainment. A simple change of tone without shouting is enough to let the dog know that we don’t like a behaviour. By walking a dog this way we are providing the right amount of positive and negative feedback balance and in turn creating a positive environment for the dog to learn in.
The other main benefit of this is that we are now concentrating on our dog, watching and learning the dog’s body language and building on our understanding of what makes our dog tick. So not only does the walk become more enjoyable for both you and your dog, the dog is learning what we want and we are learning more about our dog. It’s a win, win.
Comments