Repost and update: The Emotional Toll of a Reactive Dog

** This is the most widely read post I have ever written. Nearly 2 years on, I still get messages from people who have come across it for the first time, and it still gets me every single time, that email that says how great it feels to realise they aren't alone and that there are other people that understand. Here's the complete text of the article - I'll add some more thoughts at the bottom. 😊

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Get a dog, they said. It'll be fun, they said. Think of all those great, social dog walks, they said.

So why am I stumbling around a field at 4.30 in the morning?

I've had a number of dogs over the years. All have had their distinct personalities, but all were fairly easy going, and liked meeting people and going to places. Owning a dog meant that people would sometimes smile as we walked past them in the street, children would come up and ask if they could fuss them, and our dogs loved all of the attention.

And then along came Finn.

The Pros of Practicing Positive Reinforcement

Why should we use positive reinforcement when working with our dogs?

So what is positive reinforcement? The thing that comes to mind for most people is food rewards. These are a form of positive reinforcement, but to begin to understand what makes positive reinforcement the best option for our dogs’ learning process, we need to understand a little bit about learning theory. Anything that will increase the chances of a dog repeating a behaviour is known as a reinforcer. Reinforcing the behaviour means that the dog is more likely to do it again. There are two kinds of reinforcement – negative and positive.