Feel-Good Training and Rehabilitation

All of my training methods revolve around one cardinal principle, the power of pleasure. We are all mammals and we all gravitate towards what makes us feel good. You have never repeated a behavior in your life that did not get you a desired outcome, neither will your dog. A dog that has had an abusive past quickly learns that everytime someone approaches it gets kicked. As a defense mechanism the dog growls and lunges, the pleasurable result is that the approaching person backs off. The dog will generalize this behavior to all environments and circumstances to create distance and decrease the chances of getting physically abused. Another example is that dogs come into our enviornment not knowing if sit or jumping is appropriate. Since it is easy to ignore a good dog, most dogs do not recieve attention when they are calm and sitting. However, when a dog jumps we yell, we push, we make eye contact, and even treat. Bad attention and good attention is better than no attention at all. Jumping feels better than sitting, the dog is gravitating towards the behavior that gets the reward. Dog Training and Rehabilitation is not about punishment, its about empowering the dog to make a concious decision based on making a choice of what feels good.