Not me my pair race back for the lead - cos I put it on a good distance before the end of the walk and do a lot of really rewarding tricks

hmm I can see what you mean that putting the lead on is something the dog dosent always enjoy because it can signle the end of the walk
and often we say to people they are punishing the dogs recal by rewarding it with the end of the walk so it makes comming back less likely
- so yes that is punishing

But I assume as your dogs are highly trained you are not loosing any behaviour by ending the walk - so what actually is being punished? what behaviour is becoming less likely by you ending the walk?

Yes MY dogs race back to be put on the lead too. Because they have been classically conditioned to associate the lead with positive things like training

But that does not change the fact that just as there is a hierarchy of rewards/reinforcers there is a similar hierarchy of punishers.

Some things are "more/less" punishing than others.

Some things are punishing to some dogs and not others.

Some things are punishing or not depending on context.

So to answer your question, does behaviour get stronger /more likely ONLY if you use the highest value reinforcer?

So is going on the lead punishing??

and nope - the behaviour gets more likely if the reward is rewarding at that time
If its super rewarding then you get super attentive dogs

Going on the lead is punishing if my dogs would prefer to be doing something else.............

Its something they dont like thats true - but what behaviour is it punishing?

Whatever behaviour they would rather be doing, so, for example, if I am doing protection work and I put my dog on the lead I am punishing him by stopping him playing at biting people.

If my dog is searching for articles and I put the lead on and thus stop him from searching, I am punishing him.

If my dog is digging a hole and I put him on a lead, I am punishing him by stopping him digging a hole.

Just like taking children from the funfair, I am punishing them by stopping them going on rides.

hmm I can unbdedrstand why you say that, I had a think about it but I dont agree
It prevents the bahaviour from happening at that point but it dosent make it less likely to haqppen in the future
I would call that managment rather than behaviour modification/training

Good article - and frankly quite reassuring for a 'newbie' like me. I have read a couple of training books and they mostly say to just ignore negative behaviour and reward the behaviour you want to see. But that doesn't always work - sometimes I have to use the word 'no' - and do you know what; with all this emphasis on 'positive' training I have felt guilty about that! xx

Whisper is unfortunately not a good candidate for me to learn about training as she isn't interested and 99% of her time in the house is spent asleep or mostly asleep which is how she likes it. Am planning on a puppy in a year or so and find myself virtually laid awake worrying that I won't bring it up right, will use a negative term and ruin the puppy for life!

I do plan to invest in some good books - Ian Dunbar is at the top of my list lol. But I still worry about being positive!

I decided to try and bring Etta up without saying 'no'---I lasted about 24hours!

Life isn't like that.

rune

Hanlou
I am sure you will do fine in the main with most dogs a little non nasty 'punishment' does them no harm at all so long as it is balanced with lots and lots of praise, being fair and consistant

The problem was in the past people trained mainly with punishments - so people tried to think of terms to use to distance themselves from the yank and choke trainers
reward based or positive was often used
I know plenty 'positive' trainers who use some punishemnt
I know clicker trainers who push dogs into position sometimes
Lots of people use a mixture of methods

mainly I just try and move away from punishments as much as I can because it gives me more of a mental challange trying to think of how to train it - rather than punishing
Then when I first got Mia she was very sensitive to getting things wrong - not in that she was timid or anything - she just bogged off and wouldnt do anything if she thought she had got it wrong - so I had to make her feel that every single thing she did was the correct thing - and find ways for me to make it easy enough for her to always get it correct
Thankfully she is better now and we can 'try again' if something is wrong
But boy it really made me have to think