Positive Reinforcement & Balanced Training
AT BDT we use positive reinforcement for all Basic Obedience behaviors. You may say “but I don’t always want to have treats on me” Good neither do we, we use treats for behaviors like, sit, down, and stay, etc. Then we fade out the treats as quickly as possible and add a “release” which becomes the reinforcement.
And we don’t even use treats for many behaviors, like wait at doors and loose leash walking and Jumping, because the reinforcement is “built in”. The reinforcement for not jumping is attention, the reinforcement for waiting is a release out the door and the reinforcement for not pulling is to continue on the walk. We feel that many dog trainers have gotten too reliant on treats. Joel knows his clients don’t want to use a lot of treats and we are committed to achieving this. On the flip side, we have never and will never use shock collars or prong collars. The reason is simple. Joel has seen these methods cause random, sporadic and intense aggression. Joel understands aggression, fear and reactivity like no one else and knows the difficulties of extinguishing these behaviors. Therefore, we will never use these methods.