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DOG's DON'T PUNISH!

How often do you punish your dog believing your dog understands why he/she was punished?

I NEVER use the word punishment with my clients. I never instruct my clients to punish their dog. I inform them to use a correction. In my opnion we should never punish unwanted behaviour, we correct it.

Punishment - Usually carried out with negative emotion

My view is that punishment is usually administered out of anger due to a loss of control. Punishment is usually administered after the fact, when the dog is less likely to understand the reasoning behind our negative behaviour toward it. For example, we come home and find the washing all over the back yard ripped to shreds. Our dog comes running up to us, happy we are home. We are angry, grab the dog and punish him in front of the ripped up washing. Not only is the dog put into a state of confusion, but in many cases fear. Due to our anger, we then prolong the punishment even after the dog has submitted to our aggressive energy. The dog has no out from our aggressive behaviour, as submitting doesn't work. We can in many instances then create stress in the dog because the dog is then continually on guard watching our body language looking for signs of this aggressive energy, and runs off in fear or becomes aggressive itself to protect itself (because remember, submitting naturally didn't work).

Or we catch our dog actually in the act, and use punishment. We see our dog chewing on the tv remote. We rush over in anger and punish our dog, our dog submits to our aggression, but due to our state of mind we continue with the aggressive energy and continue to punish our dog. Again the dog has no out to our aggression, as submitting didn't work.

We end up with a dog that doesn't trust or respect our leadership. When the dog is punished or picks up any aggressive energy from us, it runs off in fear or turns and displays fear aggression.

Correction (and blocking) - Carried out with no emotion

Correction is an instant reaction to correct an unwanted behaviour, while the dog is still focused on this unwanted behaviour. We correct without emotion, as there is never a sense of a loss of control. When the dog submits to our instant correction we cease the correction immediately. The dog then trusts our correction and leadership. After the correction we act as if nothing happened and continue our normal relationship with our dog. Our dog is not stressed and is never on guard looking for the negative energy as described above in punishment. A dog that is corrected properly never runs off from its owner, it actually comes to the owner as a mark of respect you could say. I then praise my dog, always, no matter what my dog was corrected for.

As Cesar Milan so rightly says "CALM assertive energy and body language"

I hate the terms used in dog training such as negative punsihment (-P) and positive punishment ( +P) etc.. The term punishment presents the wrong attitude, and a wrong state of mind.