Positive Dog Training Blog

Lure and Reward Dog training is a method that teaches the dog that behaviors that we like, are rewarded with something good. Most often people think of rewarding a dog with food – and yes, that does work, but a reward in dog training can be anything the dog likes.

A reward can be letting a dog sniff, run, go outside, chase a toy or ball, play with another dog, eat their dinner, or even get a treat. The lure is what we use to get the dog into a specific position. For example, when we teach sit, we put a treat in front of their nose, get their head to look up to the sky – as that happens the rear end usually hits the ground. When it does, we give the treat. Once they do it 3-4 times, we switch to some other type of dog training reward and we randomly choose what a good reward will be – this will help the dog learn to not only follow the treat, but to also perform the behavior without a treat in his nose. This is the best type of dog training for all dogs!

Clicker Training

A clicker is a small piece of plastic / metal that makes a sharp click noise. This is primarily used with more advanced dog trainers and some dog trianing clubs that really have success at it. The benefit is that you can mark the behavior specifically. So if you are working on sit, you would click when the rear end goes down – that acts as a bridge between when the behavior happened and when they got the treat. The clicker works best with more precise dog training such as agility or tricks. You can also get into something called shaping which is where you wait for behaviors to happen and click them when they do – if you were teaching "down" eventually your dog will get tired and lay down – you could click that in order to teach it rather than using a treat to lure the dog. I like clicker dog training for more advanced dog training classes or for fearful or aggressive dog problems. It helps to have that added layer of dog training communication.

Traditional Dog Training

Most people who did any type of dog training class 10-20 years ago, typically used traditional dog training methods. The dog training instructor will put a choke collar or pinch / prong collar on the dog. When the dog is doing something right you praise the dog and sometimes use food as a reward, but when the dog does something wrong, you use the collar to correct the dog. In order to issue a dog training type correction, you pull the leash upward and slightly to the side in order to "pop" or "choke" the dog – the collar tightens around the dogs neck. The upside to this is that you are providing information to the dog – rewarding what you like, punishing what you dont like. Unfortunately you are using pain in order to communicate that message. The belief now, is that we dont need to use pain in dog training, that we can use the rewards or other types of consequences that aren’t painful in order to change the behavior. I also find that the dog typically doesn’t fully know the behavior before they are getting corrected. Finally, the dog tends to learn they can ignore the behavior when the collar is off.

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