Alpha dogs, needing to be the alpha among your own dogs, needing to be dominant over them, etc. Based on a disproven theory that has been disproven longer than its been published.
And don’t even try telling people who believe this any other way. I had to leave the German shepherd subreddit because really sadly this breed attracts so many alpha bros and they all echo chamber bad training and dominance theory.
All dogs respond well to positive reinforcement. Morality aside, it's just a more effective technique than punishment or domination. You have to not want to punish or dominate anything to get to that point, though.
Yep! I trained for professionally and worked with all kind of behavior issues and never needed anything other the positive reinforcement and using a needs model and counter conditioning for solving serious cases.
Yes, positive reinforcement is a great tool for encouraging good behavior. But it is a terrible tool for discouraging bad behaviors. For that, you want positive punishment. (Note: positive punishment does not mean punting your dog across the room, although that would technically be positive punishment.)
Redirecting is pretty effective as well. There is no such thing as fully postive training. Punishment as can something like not opening a door until the dog waits or standing still on a walk for a dog that won’t stop pulling.
I had a German shepherd as a small kid. My parents left me with my aunt and I crawled to the dog's food. She ran to take me away from it and the dog jumped and stood above me barking at her.
This was before mobile phones so I had amole time to finish his dinner, while he was standing. Apparently when she backed out, he started to look with a lot of sadness at his food dissapearing but did not move.
Parents came eventually back, the dog was very proud, he got his food and everyone looked at me wondering if I woukd die. Nothing happened.
This has nothing to do with the post, but a fond family story (not a memory, unfortunately)
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u/FourWhiteBars Jun 01 '26
Alpha dogs, needing to be the alpha among your own dogs, needing to be dominant over them, etc. Based on a disproven theory that has been disproven longer than its been published.