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Punishment

Punishment should never be used in training or everyday life. If you punish your dog, it will only teach him to be scared of you, may eventually teach him to be aggressive and to mistrust you, causes suffering and your relationship may break down.

Avoid punishment in training (and everyday life) by trying the following principles (first used by Karen Pryor and dolphin trainers) – it’ll be far more effective and could improve your relationship with your dog:

• Reward all wanted behaviour – so that your dog is likely to repeat it in the future
• Ignore unwanted behaviour – so that your dog is less likely to repeat it. For some dogs ‘nasty’ attention can be as rewarding as ‘nice’ attention – so no attention at all is better
• Avoid triggering the unwanted behaviour – avoidance prevents the unwanted behaviour from happening in the first place!
• Where unwanted behaviour cannot be ignored or avoided, train an alternative, acceptable behaviour for your dog to perform instead. It is much easier to train a dog to do something else that you don’t mind, than to train him to completely stop something that you do not like. For example, if your dog jumps up at people, teach him a really good ‘sit’ command and ask for this when meeting others. If he is rewarded with treats and attention every time he sits, he’ll soon automatically be doing this when he meets people, instead of jumping up!