06/25/2026
+ & - it’s not what you think! 🤔 🤷♀️
EDIT: FB has this labeled "AI Info"
The IMAGE is AI. The COPY is created by me.
I have had a lot of traffic on this page from the two posts I created about dog training equipment. The overwhelming response was in agreement with what I wrote, but as can be expected when dealing with controversial topics, some folks took it upon themselves to argue about it.
Since most of the controversy was over equipment, today we’re going to discuss the principle of ‘positive reinforcement’ or +R for brevity.
To start with, most folks think of positive (+) and negative (-) as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’, when in fact, they are simply abbreviations for mathematical terms that mean to add or subtract. Positive in this context, means to add, and negative means to take away.
With positive reinforcement training (+R), something the dog finds appetitive (desire for gratification) is added when the dog performs a behavior the handler wants. Marker training (clickers are common) is used for ‘marking’ the precise moment the dog engages in the behavior. That is called a ‘conditioned reinforcer’.
As I have stated many times, I am not opposed to positive reinforcement, I am not opposed to “marker training” I use it every day. I use clickers, I have trained my vocal response to be measured and precise when a clicker is not practical.
My favorite tool is a ‘Manners Minder’ (now referred to as a ‘Treat ‘N Train’). I wish they were more robust. They break down easily, but there is nothing better for introducing fairly complex behaviors quickly.
Food rewards can be a powerful training tool when used appropriately. Timing is the critical factor when using any reinforcement, and although delivery matters, timing that conditioned reinforcer matters more than anything else. Every day I meet dogs who have been inadvertently reinforced for the behavior the handler is trying to eliminate, and that imprecise reinforcement schedule has made the behavior much worse.
Food is easy, until you meet a dog that is unmotivated by it. You can sharpen appetites by depriving the dog of access to meals, and many trainers do, but I have found that a lack of appetite is usually accompanied by dogs with low drive for any of the other traditional reinforcement items, like toys, play, tug or opportunities to chase (a link in the predatory chain of ‘seek, stalk, chase, kill, consume’), which most pet dogs will do, until they no longer find it reinforcing.
So, what then?
However, I do think there are important questions that often get overlooked.
A lot of assumptions are made about the behavior of predator animals, and I really need the audience to remember that dogs, however small and cute, are descendants of an Apex Predator species.
Dogs are certainly capable of learning through the use of food; since their very biology is designed around cooperative hunting to secure it. Their primary drive *should* be food; access to food, securing food. This is the evolutionary pressure that has changed dogs over time, to their present form.
Domesticity may have changed their looks, but dogs still maintain the physiological blueprint of an apex predator.
While using food as reinforcement has its place, one of the hurdles is the chronic use (never weaning the dog away from food as a reinforcement) and poor timing. It makes the work transactional, and the dog overly reliant on the presence of food to perform.
Many folks, both professional and layman alike have seen the dog who mugs its handler for food, becoming invasive and demanding, to the point of aggression, in search of their next ‘paycheck’.
It is primarily the result of poor timing of the marker, no defined parameters under which the dog can function (limiting the dog’s options to engage in certain behaviors in pursuit of reinforcement), and other inconsistencies that accelerate the dog’s frustration.
Positive reinforcement isn’t bad, it is not thoroughly understood, even by many of its own advocates, and that’s where the problems reside.
The issues that I see, which receive far less attention, are when the dog is inadvertently being reinforced for arousal, over-stimulation, tension or other visual aspects that indicate an ‘unsettled’ mind.
A thousand times folks have heard me say two things when it comes to dogs; “What you pet, is what you get,” and “Perish the thought, you perish the deed.”
People routinely reinforce dogs for refusal- the most common example is the dog that refuses to walk on a leash. The owner plies the dog with food, gets down on their hands and knees and literally begs the dog to move, using the leftover hamburger from the previous night’s meals. That may initiate a step or two in the right direction, but the delivery catches the dog’s mental state in rigid refusal, and that is where his mind is made up.
Resist, hold out for the good stuff, while the owner scrabbles to come up with a better lure, the dog is convinced that he is being conditioned to continue resisting.
The handler may be thinking he is reinforcing that slight action, but what he is unable to detect is the dog’s emotional state and how the handler is actually hardening that refusal.
That’s where things get complicated.
If we are reinforcing for the act, but the dog remains emotionally and physically in opposition, what have we really improved? It’s not the dogs’ frame of mind. Reinforcing a behavior may be the goal, but under certain circumstances, it is not what is accomplished.
I do not see +R as a panacea for the things that really matter; the understanding of correct timing, emotional self-regulation, accurate reading of body language and how they all play a role in successful timing.
Used without understanding those things, +R itself becomes a crutch.
Used in conjunction with a concise understanding of interoception and how we can influence behavior as well as emotions, makes the difference between a trick, and a permanent behavioral change.
That is not achieved through positive reinforcement alone.
We have outlined the positive in reinforcement, now it’s time to look at the negative, which, in reference to reinforcement, is the taking away of something the dog doesn’t like.
That can be pretty subjective.
Some people immediately bristle at the concept of discomfort, but for the sake of argument, what if the ‘negative; we were removing was the stress, anxiety or confusion from the dog’s perspective?
The goal is to help the dog reframe its concerns about the environment, or things within the environment that create anxiety or other forms of arousal.
The fundamental flaw in modern ideological training agendas is the claim that a trainer can operate exclusively in one quadrant (e.g., "Purely Positive"). In the physical world of behavior, this is mathematically impossible:
• You cannot have Positive Reinforcement (+R) without the implicit threat of Negative Punishment (-P). If the dog doesn't do the behavior, the reward is withheld. That withholding is, by definition, aversive to a motivated animal.
• You cannot apply a correction or physical boundary Positive Punishment (+P) without immediately utilizing Negative Reinforcement (-R) the exact millisecond the animal complies and the pressure stops.
The quadrants are a closed thermodynamic system of behavior. They flow naturally from one to another because animals learn through dynamic contrast, the transition from a state of pressure/withholding to a state of comfort/reward.
This "wheel" concept, the fluid, inescapable continuity between the quadrants, MUST be used to accurately explain how boundaries and rewards actually operate in real-time training.
It has never been one or the other, it is smooth rotation from one to the next.
