Wagging Rights Dog Training

Positive reinforcement is the gas, and punishment is the brake.

The number one reason owners are struggling, and the number one reason why great dogs are surrendered and euthanized daily, is due to the delusional, feel-good, reality-hating narrative that everything you need to train and live well with a dog is contained within the realm of positive reinforcement.

You would expect that driving a car with no brakes would be a foolish and dangerous undertaking, and yet day after day owners are attempting to train and live with dogs in precisely the same fashion.

It’s not you or your dog that is broken, it’s the incredibly toxic, dangerous, and delusional narrative you’ve been fed that is broken.

When you’re ready to escape the delusion, and embrace reality — a reality that requires both positive and negative consequences, the “gas and the brake” — the answers you and your dog need will materialize.

Video on how to create a boundary-

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Just this one single change in your thinking, habits, actions can have a massive impact on your dog’s indoor behavior… and your sanity.

Dogs develop associations with events or environments (and time — see below) which predict consistent outcomes, and respond accordingly.

The doorbell predicts visitors/intruders and that repeated association creates the wild and crazy response that most of us are all too familiar with.

Same goes for environments. If an environment predicts play, romping, and nonsense (because that’s what’s been trained/allowed/encouraged), you should expect dogs to behave that way when in said environment. And if an environment predicts calm, relaxed, lowkey behavior (because that’s what’s been trained/allowed/encouraged), you should expect dogs to behave accordingly.

People who have trained/conditioned their dogs to have these associations with the inside/outside environments have dogs who will happily go bananas in the yard (or wherever the designated play area is) and then walk in the house and immediately shift gears and chill — typically with little to no effort from the owner to make it so.

I’m sure many of you will be saying, “But how do I create this?” Firstly, by simply following the indoor/outdoor behavior rule — consistently. Secondly, work on a solid place command (it must be proofed and reliable to the point that the dog will hold it even when interesting things are occurring — if the dog breaks whenever it desires, you have trained a trick not a command and you won’t receive any of the benefits), and build a good amount of duration into it (your dog should be able to hold place for multiple hours if you really want a solid “Off-Switch” association with the command).

But what about when the dog is inside and not in command (they’re free/at liberty), and they get too jazzed up and crazy? Here comes the part no one likes — correct the unwanted excitement. Yep. Your dog won’t hate you or be brokenhearted, it will just have clear information that indoor behavior is different than outdoor behavior. Once corrected, simply go about life and let them do their thing.

It’s really that simple, and boy does it make living with dogs much more enjoyable.

PS, I can hear the folks complaining that they don’t have yards or that the weather is too nasty and so they have no choice — or they don’t want to create this contrasting behavior. (F-U Sean! 😂) If you don’t have a choice, I get it. My 3 big dogs lived with me for the first 10 years of their lives in a one bedroom apartment, and we had no yard or other area to play in. So we romped like crazy indoors (and I DO mean crazy!!!). But, we had very clear “romping times” — every morning after our 90 minute walk we would cut loose and go nuts. The end of the walk and the time of day became the association. (We didn’t romp after evening walks.) And after “romping time” the indoors was for chill behavior, period. Any over-the-top nonsense after that was addressed appropriately — and that meant that even small apartment living with 3 very big dogs was actually really easy, super comfortable, and fun.

And for all the F-U Sean folks, this post wasn’t for you! Carry on. 😘