Negative Punishment versus Positive Punishment in the teaching of the dogs

Punishment is used to interrupt behaviour. There are 2 types of punishment, positive punishment and negative punishment.

Positive punishment is the most common and used way of punishing. It consists of adding something unpleasant to terminate behaviour. Contrary to what most people might think, positive punishment does not mean the punishment is “good” it only means it is added (+) when the dog is doing something we don’t want.

A classical example of positive punishment is the dog that pulls on the lead and gets a jerk to stop pulling. The punishment is the jerk on the lead which stops the behaviour of pulling.

Negative punishment consists in removing something your dog wants or likes as a consequence of an unwanted behaviour; it is an extremely strong tool in training and educating a dog. Considering that dogs will repeat behaviours which will bring good things into their lives, it is also very unlikely they will repeat the behaviours which result in the ending of those same things they want.

A good example of a negative punishment would be to stop playing with a puppy dog as soon as he starts mouthing your hands. The ceasing of the play will be the negative punishment for the mouthing of the hands. The dog will be less likely to mouth your hands to avoid stopping the play time.

Bad use of the Negative Punishment

Many dog owners will take their dogs on to a park, get them off lead and let them play freely for a while. When its time to go home they will call the dog, put back the lead and leave. This is a good example of a bad use of negative punishment. The dog soon will associate the recall (calling the dog) as the end of the play time, and will stop complying. It is a negative punishment, because we are taking something the dog wants (playing freely on a the park) as a consequence of something ( in this case, for coming when called).

To avoid this scenario, call the dog several times during play time, and reward the dog for coming with praise or even a treat and let him go back to play. That way the dog will not associate being called with terminating play time.

Good use of negative punishment

A good use of the negative punishment would be jumping on people. When dogs are young and small it is very enduring when they try so hard to jump up and lick our faces in cheer excitement of seeing us. Most people due to the small size of the dogs, actually respond by not only accepting the behaviour of jumping but actually reinforcing it by giving the dog what he wants – attention.

A good use of negative punishment in this case is to stop all interaction with the dog as soon as he starts jumping on you and only interact when he has 4 paws on the floor. The dog very soon understands that the behaviour of jumping makes the attention go away and is less likely to repeat it.

Types of Positive Punishment

There are several things that fall into positive punishment category; here is a list of a few:

       Jerking the lead

       The use of choke chains, prong collars or electric choke collars

       Squirting water or any type of liquids in the dogs face

       Throwing things at in the direction of the dog to provoke fear

       Physically hitting the dog/ smacking the dog with newspaper

       Ear pinching

       Rubbing the dogs nose in their urine

Downside of positive punishment

Positive punishment techniques are based on adding something bad to stop behaviour. Under this premise the dog will constantly be anxious and fearful of the consequences and might shut down completely and cease offering any behaviour at all. Some other dogs will even turn aggressive and defensive towards the owner/handler. If the handler is unfair (jerks the lead with too much strength) or if the timing for the punishment is off, it is very likely the punishment might have a different and very negative outcome.

If the dog is pulling on the lead whilst looking at a child, and the handler jerks the lead, there is no saying that the dog won’t actually associate the punishment to the child instead of associating it to the behaviour of pulling. If the handler jerks the lead too late, the dog might associate the punishment to something else that it’s doing at the moment (might even be looking at the owner itself!)