Obedience training is the key to having a dog that is an enjoyable pet. Obedience training is one of the best things you can do for your dog or puppy and yourself. Obedience training is the key to reliable…

Another problem with using punishment, and a potentially big problem, is that punishment often results in one-trial learning. This can be a problem if the trainer has made a timing error (and timing errors are inherent in training, even for the most skilled trainers), then the dog can have a superstitious response. In other words, the dog may well learn something you do not intend. If the punishment was aversive enough, the dog may not ever unlearn its response to a stimulus. Ideally that is how punishment would be used (one-trial learning) but the criterion of perfect is too hard to meet consistently. Another problem is that punishment results in a more generalized response than does positive reinforcement. In other words, punishing for one particular behavior that you want to eliminate in a dog’s repertoire may cause other behaviors to decrease in frequency too. When punishment is used frequently, a dog will shut down and no longer offer behaviors as readily, if at all. I don’t know if there are studies of these consequences of use of punishment, but trainers have encountered them empirically and discuss them with one another. If anyone has references, I would be interested in learning about them.

This post was mentioned on Twitter by HRdogtraining: why we shud be using R+ to train our dogs http://bit.ly/6NeRlD...