What is balanced training?
Balanced training is training that involves saying both “yes” and “no” to your dog. This is different from positive reinforcement-only training, which involves only saying “yes".
Positive reinforcement is an integral component of balanced training. I love rewarding dogs for doing great things! If the dog in front of me is showing me nothing but perfect angel-ness, I’ll give him all the treats and toys and praise in the world. But rewards have their limitations. What if that dog decides to jump up on your elderly neighbor, guards his toys from the kids, barks his head off at the front door? Do we try (and fail) to entice him with treats to make the right choices? Or do we show him, quickly and fairly, which behaviors are not going to fly, and then continue on with all the good stuff?
I prefer the latter option. If we reward our dogs for doing great things and correct them for doing not-so-great things, we give our dogs the clearest picture possible about what is expected of them.
In addition to food, toys, and praise, many balanced trainers have other tools in their training toolboxes, such as prong collars and e-collars. I started out extremely against these tools - no one comes out of the womb thinking they’re going to use e-collars on dogs - but seeing their use in action completely changed my perspective. Trainers who I thought very highly of were using them in their training, which intrigued me. I saw for myself that the prong collar doesn’t actually pinch a dog and that the e-collar doesn’t actually shock a dog. Instead, I saw how well the dogs were responding to these tools and the successes owners were having when using them themselves. I’ve since adopted prong and e-collar training into my own training methods, and I’ve seen dramatic results.
If you’ve been training your dog with positive reinforcement-only methods without seeing results, I encourage you to look into some of these alternative methods for yourself. You might be surprised how much of a difference they can make.
