Good Dogs of Dallas

12/16/2023

02/18/2023

YARD SALE THIS MORNING!! come on over now

02/15/2023

St. Francis Park

02/15/2023

UT Dogo

02/08/2023

It wasn’t me 😇

01/18/2023

Like promised it’s Lakeland hills park

01/05/2023

And there you have it.

While this is supposed to be a pro-positive reinforcement/anti-punishment graphic from a positive reinforcement trainer, what it really is, is the unintentional “outing” of the truth.

I had to laugh when I came across this, because it was so oblivious to what it really shared: that you use positive reinforcement to build behaviors, and you use punishment to stop them—and logically, oops, you need both to achieve the goals of teaching what is desired and what isn’t. Yes and no, good and bad.

This graphic explains the fatal flaw in their ideology/method, but doesn’t realize it. Do you want to build more reactivity, more jumping, more pulling, more resource guarding, more mouthing, more impolite behavior, more ignoring your recall when something more enticing comes along—or do you want to stop it?

And this is precisely why if you’re using a PP/FF trainer, or following the tenets of their beliefs, you’re still struggling. (You’ll know you’re caught in the web nonsense if you’re trying to stop an unwanted behavior via positive reinforcement.)

Here’s the thing, these trainers want you to believe you can simply “yes” or reward your way out of bad behavior—you know, the whole “use an incompatible behavior”, “redirect, don’t correct!”, “become more valuable than the trigger with higher value treats!”—while the literature on operant conditioning is crystal clear that only punishment reduces/eliminates behavior. (Operant conditioning is “the science” they’re so fond of celebrating select pieces of and ignoring those pieces which don’t fit the narrative.)

This IS the elephant in the training room, and why so many owners struggle and struggle and struggle. A very large group of people have decided to hijack “the science”, and reality, and re-package it in a utopian fantasy. They’ve worked extremely hard to demonize punishment as being exceptionally harmful/dangerous, and so this essential component of having a reliable, and well behaved dog is either unknown to most owners, or they’ve been so frightened away from it they don’t even consider it.

But if you’d like to get off the struggle train and get your dog into a great space, take these special moments when the PP/FF ideologues accidentally out themselves and their methods as the fatally flawed things they are by unintentionally telling you the truth…and run with that awareness.

This stuff isn’t super complicated. Any good, honest, ethical, and yes, “science-based” trainer is using both reward and punishment to help their clients achieve their goals. Period. Anything else is anti-science, and thus anti-reality, and anti-success.

PS, “punishment” here is being used in behavioral terms, and does not mean beating up, bullying, or hurting your dog, it simply means *anything* which reduces or eliminates a behavior. Look it up under “Operant Conditioning” and see for yourself. It’s an easy read, and having this simple knowledge can protect you from charlatans who would otherwise happily mislead you...and happily allow you and your dog to continue to struggle.

10/07/2022

One of the best ways to help a dog learn how to relax and enjoy life without stressing out 🐶

Andrea | SLC Dog Training shared a post on Instagram: "Trainers teach the concept of Place to dogs many ways, but my favorite way has been what how I’ve learned from Cheri Wolf Lucas. Through the nature of treating place as a sacred space for the dog, free from stress, but taught through guidance ...

10/02/2022

Timber is upset that his previous page was hacked and so we started a new one and slowly getting all the pictures from this thief. Timber hopes that his fans are patient 🐶

03/27/2022

hello fans