04/04/2022
✨MYTHS✨ just go ahead and run if you see any of these.
🆘 your dog is trying to dominate you
🆘 “dog psychology”. Enough said. That’s not a thing. There is applied behavior analysis and learning theory but dog psychology is not a real thing
🆘be a pack leader. PSA: You’re neither a pack leader nor a dog. Learning theory is applicable across species. If you wouldn’t use the principle on a shark, you shouldn’t be using it on your dog.
🆘using treats is a distraction. The use of food is easy and powerful. Is your salary a distraction? No. It’s reinforcement for a job well done. Positive reinforcement is the addition of something rewarding at a specific time to increase the likelihood of a behavior occurring again AND/OR treats can be used with classical conditioning to pair something neutral or “bad” with something good to create a conditioned emotional response. Science y’all. It’s a thing.
🆘you have to walk through a threshold first and eat first. You can if you want to (but also why?) and it has no effect on your relationship with your dog
🆘giving Human food creates a dog that “begs”. What do you think dogs eat in their food? It’s just food that we eat but heavily processed. My dogs had celery today…who knew that celery had that much power (sarcasm)
🆘”your dog needs corrections”. If you’re training well, you wouldn’t need corrections and even if you did, it would be focused on correcting the human behavior and your own training to set the dog up for success. Look at the training-not the dog. I’d love to erase the entire idea of “corrections” from the dog world. When anyone says correction, they mean punishment but you’d think twice if they said, “apply the punishment” instead. So think twice.
🆘e-collars are like a TENS unit. A TENS unit is a therapeutic tool that delivers electrical pulses in an intentional way to provide relief. By definition, if you’re seeing results from an e-collar, it must be uncomfortable and aversive to the learner-not relieving. That’s how it operates.
🆘advocating for your dog does not mean using tools or methods that include pain, fear, force, or coercion. That’s the opposite of advocating for your dog ✌🏻
