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types of dog training
Puppy Socials – Wonder Puppy
Puppy Kindergarten: Focuses on early socialization, bite inhibition, and simple commands like sit and down for young pups.
Basic Manners: Teaches essential household cues including stay, come when called, and loose-leash walking.
Impulse Control: Adds distance, duration, and heavy distractions to test your dog's reliability around other people and pets. Skills training to take your dog to the next level. It focuses on teaching dogs to interact politely with humans and other animals, as well as developing desirable behaviors. This includes skills like polite greetings, not jumping on people, walking politely on a leash, and more.
Specialized Sports: Builds physical fitness and teamwork by guiding dogs through obstacle and scent courses.
Therapy and Service Prep: Prepares dogs for official testing like the Canine Good Citizen (CGC) exam or therapy certification.
Tracking and Search and Rescue: Tracking and search and rescue training harness a dog's remarkable scent detection and tracking abilities. Dogs are trained to follow scents, locate missing persons, and provide assistance in search and rescue operations
Protection Training: Protection training involves teaching dogs to protect their handlers and property when faced with potential threats.
Behavior Modification: Targets complex issues like severe fear, anxiety, or dog reactivity.
Therapy and Service Prep: Prepares dogs for official testing like the Canine Good Citizen (CGC) exam or therapy certification.
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training methods
Training Methods:
Positive Reinforcement (sometimes referred to as force-free)
Force-free trainers commit to using humane, non-coercive training tools and methods, focusing primarily on the “positive reinforcement” quadrant of operant conditioning, in which the dog’s behavior results in good/enjoyable things for the dog.
Force-free trainers take care to manage the dog’s environment well to be sure their dogs don’t get reinforced for unwanted behaviors. They may occasionally use “negative punishment,” where they take away something the dog enjoys when the dog exhibits an undesired behavior (for example, you stop petting your dog when he jumps up on you). They’re also likely to use counter-conditioning – using something wonderful to change a dog’s opinion of (association with) something from negative to positive.
Note that a trainer who is truly force-free will not use prong collars, shock collars, leash jerks, verbal or physical punishment, flooding, or “corrections” to try to change a dog’s behavior. Ever.
Balanced Training:
The term “balanced” has become a common euphemism for training that embraces a wide range of training methods, from positive reinforcement all the way to the most aversive tools and techniques. Balanced trainers may sometimes use treats and/or other reinforcers, but they are just as likely to use aversive tools and methods.
Recent studies tell us that positive reinforcement training generally works more quickly than a coercive approach. However, it can sometimes take longer to accomplish behavior goals using only force-free methods (especially if the dog has negative associations with things or situations that require counter-conditioning and desensitization).
In my experience, when faced with a training challenge, balanced trainers tend to resort to quick fixes that always have negative repercussions for the dog, even when it appears to achieve the training goal in the moment.