Five Principles of Dog Training

3. MOTIVATION

Motivation is needed to influence your dog to make correct decisions, which requires action from the owner. If your dog acts out a positive behavior, you must quickly act in a positive, rewarding manner. This is called positive motivation or rewards. How you reward your dog is very important. Rewards should be tangible and physical. Verbal rewards often do not create enthusiasm in the dog, but food and petting can go a long way. Negative motivation or corrections may be applied if your dog acts out a negative behavior. A correction is a matter of fact negative stimulation a dog receives promptly following negative behavior. Use of safe, proven dog training equipment is recommended. Owners must be coached as to how to use this equipment correctly. Corrections must never be delivered out of frustration or anger. Further, they must be applied routinely and with proper timing. Dogs can be trained without the use of negative motivation, however, in many instances, reliability will suffer.