Can you trust the advice your trainer's giving you? Sadly, I often hear of trainers giving advice that appears made up, with no real theoretical or scientific basis. In most places, becoming a dog trainer requires no formal training or education. Therefore, uneducated trainers dispense a lot of misinformation. This is sad and inexcusable, because in the last twenty years, our scientific understanding of how dogs think, learn and feel has greatly expanded. We no longer have to guess at what training methods are most effective. Based on the scientific data, we can examine both how traditional training works and how positive reinforcement training works, as well as how these trainings impact dogs. In particular, we now have enough information to understand how the use of pain and force negatively impacts a dog's ability to learn as compared to positive reinforcement-based techniques. To understand these differences, we must first understand how these two training methods work. Traditional Training Traditional Training is the basic philosophy of traditional trainers which is to correct any unwanted behavior using a leash correction or “pop” and then praise the appropriate behavior. For example, a traditional trainer may ask a dog to sit. If the [...]