23/01/2023
Don't fall for these Dog Behavior Myths!
🚫If you pet your dog when they're afraid, you're encouraging more fear🚫
❗FALSE❗
Fear is an emotional state: a reaction to something highly aversive. It is not an attempt at manipulation.
🚫You need to punish dogs for growling, or they'll end up becoming more aggressive🚫
❗FALSE❗
Dogs growl because something upsetting is too close. If you punish them for informing you, they are still upset but now won't let you know, thus allowing scary things to get closer and possibly end up bitten.
🚫Rewards are just bribes and compromise your relationship🚫
❗FALSE❗
The idea that behavior should just, in the words of Susan Friedman, PhD, “flow like a fountain” without need of consequences, is opposed by more than sixty years of unequivocal evidence that behavior is, “a tool to produce consequences.” Another problem is that bribes are given before behavior and rewards after. And, a mountain of evidence from decades of research in pure and applied settings has demonstrated over and over that positive reinforcement—i.e. reward—makes relationships better, never worse.
