Balanced Training Myths - Positive Reinforcement Truths

We break down the “balanced training” myth and explain why corrections suppress behavior without teaching, while force-free methods build reliable habits by changing a dog’s emotional state. We share science, real-world steps, and how to find a qualified pro.

• positive reinforcement as a full behavioral system
• why aversives suppress rather than teach
• fear and perceived threat as roots of reactivity and aggression
• counterconditioning and desensitization under threshold
• extinction and differential reinforcement for durable change
• signs of shutdown vs true calm
• how to vet trainers and certifications
• ethics, welfare, and the bond with your dog

Hey, hit that like button, hit that share button, give us a five-star review. If you love what we do, please give us a review. That’s what helps us rank higher. That’s what helps get this information out to more people that can benefit from this. So please, if you’ve been listening for a while, if you love what we do, or if you just love this episode, think about giving us a five-star review after you’re done here.

Chapters

• 0:00 Debunking the “Balanced” Myth
• 2:30 What Positive Reinforcement Really Is
• 5:30 The Cost of Corrections and Aversives
• 10:30 Real Balance: Safety, Clarity, Motivation
• 13:30 Reactivity, Aggression, and Fear Roots
• 20:00 Quick Fixes vs Lasting Change
• 26:00 Counterconditioning Done Right
• 33:00 Credentials, Regulation, and Red Flags

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

There's a balanced training myth in the dog training community that says that positive reinforcement is great for teaching new behaviors. It's great for teaching tricks. But if you want a really reliable dog, you have to use corrections. That when there are big distractions, there's always going to be some kind of distraction that's more important to the dog, more valuable to the dog than whatever positive reinforcer that you have. So distractions, dogs that like to chase after squirrels or rabbits. And then there's the myth about you've got to give a dog a correction. You've got to teach boundaries. You've got to teach them no if they're an aggressive dog. None of that could be farther from the truth. Let's unpack the reality of balanced training myths and positive reinforcement. All that and more in 60 seconds.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03

Raised by wolves with canine DNA in his blood, having trained more than 24,000 pets, helping you and your fur babies thrive. Live in studio with Will Mangura, answering your pet behavior and training questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host and favorite pet behavior expert, Will Mangura.

SPEAKER_02: 1:48

Peel back the myths, and focus on what actually works for our dogs. I'm Will Bangora, certified canine behaviorist, and today we're tackling one of the most stubborn myths in dog training. The claim that positive reinforcement doesn't work unless you also add corrections. You've probably heard it. You need balance. Or purely positive training is fine for tricks, but not for aggression. That statement gets thrown around a lot, especially on social media by so-called balanced trainers. Today we're going to pull that idea apart piece by piece and look at what the science actually says, what positive reinforcement really means, and why the idea of balance isn't balanced at all. All right. So let's get into the first segment, and that's the mythical narrative. All right. Let's start with what these trainers are really saying. They'll tell you corrections are necessary. Dogs need to know what's wrong, not just what's right. Or you can train, you can't train aggression. You can't train high-drive behaviors with just treats. Now, it sounds reasonable, right? The word balance sounds mature, responsible, even scientific. But it's not balance. It's a misunderstanding of behavioral science. When a balanced trainer says positive reinforcement doesn't work, what they're really saying, what they really mean, is that their understanding of positive reinforcement doesn't work because they've reduced it to cookie training. And that's not what the science says at all. Positive reinforcement isn't about bribing. It's not about being permissive. It's a complete behavioral system that includes structure, consequences, and accountability. Just without the fear, the pain, and the intimidation that oftentimes comes with balance training, which uses corrections. Corrections are just a politically correct, nicer way of saying punishment, anything that causes the dog to be uncomfortable. All right. Let's talk about the science behind it. Let's break it down. In behavioral terms, positive reinforcement is adding something desirable to increase the likelihood of a behavior. But it doesn't stop there. It's part of an entire system that includes things like extinction, removing reinforcement for unwanted behaviors, negative punishment, which really is very simple. Doesn't involve any fear, pain, or intimidation. Negative punishment is just removing something that the dog wants when they make undesirable choices. Okay, so let's talk about perhaps you could quietly turn your back when a dog is jumping up, or you stop moving when the leash tightens. The behavior gets a consequence, but it's an informational consequence, not a painful one. A well-designed reinforcement system is built on predictability, clarity, and emotional safety. And that's what creates reliability, not shock, not jerking on a prong collar, not pulling on a dog's neck with a choke collar or a martingale, not intimidation, not scolding. Let's talk about what correct, let's talk about what corrections actually do. What, and and the technical term for a correction is positive punishment, adding something uncomfortable to try to get a different result. Now, let's talk about these corrections. Let's talk about prong collars. Let's talk about choke chains, let's talk about e-collars. First of all, corrections do not teach. Punishment, positive punishment, does not teach. They suppress, and there's a big difference. They can temporarily stop behavior, but at the cost, oftentimes, of emotional fallout. You know, fear, pain, intimidation causes stress, avoidance, anxiety. It can even cause aggression or exacerbate already existing aggression. There was a 2020 study by Viera DeCastro, and Castro and the colleagues that did the study found that dogs trained with aversive methods had higher cortisol levels, the stress hormone. Yeah, they showed more stress behaviors and they learned tasks, here you go, more slowly. And then Shackley did some research back in 2007 that showed that even low-level electronic collar training done by industry professionals, industry experts in electronic collar training, well, even at low levels, it created measurable stress responses. So when balanced trainers say corrections create clarity, what they're really creating is fear-based inhibition, not understanding. Not understanding. And that's really important. But let's talk about what real balance is. True balance isn't about mixing cookies and corrections. It's about balancing motivation, clarity, and safety. A dog that feels safe learns faster, retains better, and shows more stable emotional regulation. Force-free as far as force retraining, total positive reinforcement, doesn't mean no rules. It means teaching boundaries through structure and controlled reinforcement, not pain, not intimidation. It means creating behaviors that last because the dog wants to perform them, not because it's afraid not to. And too oftentimes, because balanced trainers love to do the before and after social media videos, for example, they may take a dog that is highly reactive, aggressive, on the leash when it encounters another dog on the walk, and they give it a correction with the prong collar, or they give it a correction with the shock collar. And all of a sudden, you see a dog that goes from being extremely reactive to very quickly not being reactive at all. But what you don't understand, what you don't see, what appears to be a calm dog is a dog that has shut down. The dog has not learned a thing other than how to avoid pain. How to avoid pain. Now think about this. And this is where some of the biggest issues are. Trainers, behavior consultants, and behaviorists utilize every single day. When it comes to aggression, very, very, very few dogs have dominance-based aggression. That is rare. Despite what you might hear, think, or read on the internet, it is extremely rare. Almost all aggression, almost all reactivity is based in fear, stress, anxiety. Look, no animal for the most part ever goes into fight or flight unless they perceive a threat. Now, that word perceive is really important because oftentimes there is no real threat. But if they're perceiving a threat, if they feel they've got to be defensive, they feel that they're threatened. They've got anxiety, they got fear, they have stress. So that outward display, that behavior could be barking, it could be lunging, it could be snarling, showing the teeth, it could be uh biting, those outward displays of behavior are really a symptom of the real problem. What's the real problem? Perceiving something as a threat, having anxiety, fear, stress that drives the outward behavior. If the dog didn't have that underlying emotional state of anxiety, fear, and stress, it would not feel the need to engage in that unwanted behavior. Now, if we just use corrections, if we just use punishment, if we're just using prawn collars and shock collars to suppress outward behavior, don't confuse compliance by the dog with a dog that is calm and a dog that has been cured. First of all, you don't change powerful underlying emotional states in one lesson, two lessons, three lessons. You don't change that by sending your dog away to a board and train for one week, two weeks, four weeks. You don't change that by doing a series of private lessons, maybe six or so with a trainer. This doesn't happen in six weeks, eight weeks. A dog that truly has real reactivity, a dog that truly has real aggression, it can take months of counterconditioning, desensitization, stopping reinforcement. A lot of these dogs have a strong reinforcement history when it comes to these behaviors. The behaviors have become very functional. You know, if you're walking down the street and your dog feels that there's a threat and it starts lunging, growling, snapping, and you turn around and walk away, what does that teach the dog? Now, I realize you may not have a choice initially, but what does that teach the dog? It teaches the dog, hey, that behavior is functional. That behavior works. They're not gonna give that up. They wanted distance in space, they weren't feeling comfortable. And if whatever happens right after behavior, whatever the consequence is, that's gonna reinforce the behavior. And in this case, it's the relieving of that emotional pressure through distance by getting away, turning around, getting the dog out of there, that strengthens that behavior over time. So if we're not just correcting, if we're not just punishing behaviors, if we're not just suppressing outward displays, which, by the way, if I haven't said it already, does nothing to change the dog's underlying emotional state that is the cause, or at least one of the big causes of most reactivity and aggression. And just like weeds, if you don't get at the root of the problem, they're gonna keep growing back. So if you're not dealing with the root of the problem when it comes to reactivity and aggression, if you're just punishing, if you're just correcting, if you're just suppressing that outward behavior temporarily, it's going to come back. And it's gonna come back usually much worse because you've put the dog in what I call the pressure cooker effect. The dog already is feeling pressure emotionally, feeling that there is a possible threat, perceived threat, having anxiety, stress, fear about another dog or another person that it might be reactive or aggressive to, that it becomes defensive. So we got that level of anxiety and stress and fear. And the dog's trying to, through its behavior that we don't like, but for the dog, it's the dog's way of responding to fear. The dog's trying to communicate hey, I want distance. And we make some huge mistakes when we're correcting and punishing. Number one, we start punishing fear rather than correcting aggression. And when you start punishing those behaviors with shock collars, prong collars, choke chains, yelling at the dog, and other types of punishment, aka corrections, you are adding another layer of stress to the dog. You are exacerbating because now the dog's already anxious and fearful about the trigger. Now the dog has to be afraid that my gosh, if I try to do something about my fear and anxiety, my pet parent or the trainer is gonna cause discomfort, fear, pain, intimidation, stress, anxiety. And yeah, the dog will shut down, and you may think compliance is calm, but it's not. It's smoke and mirrors. You've really done nothing. And let's face it, how difficult is it to punish a dog? How difficult, what kind of skill? Really, what kind of skill does it take to punish a dog with an electronic collar, a prong collar? It doesn't take much skill at all to cause pain. The other problem with this, besides it really not working in the long run, it's a temporary quick fix, it adds more stress to the dog and it starts to erode at and destroy that bond, that relationship that is so important with you and your dog. I don't care how bad the problem is. I don't care if your dog has insane prey drive and anything that moves, whether it be a leaf, a bird, a squirrel, a rabbit, your dog takes off like crazy, that can be trained out with positive reinforcement, with extinction, counterconditioning, desensitization. These are all tools of positive reinforcement. Withholding reinforcement for those type of behaviors. Differential reinforcement, teaching behaviors that would be incompatible or different, think different, differential, different behaviors to do instead of growling, snapping, biting, lunging, barking. Our goal is to change the dog's underlying conditioned emotional response, one of anxiety, fear, and stress, that then drives the aggressive or reactive behavior that you're seeing on the outside. The lunging, barking, snapping, maybe biting, growling. That stopping those behaviors temporarily with punishment has all kinds of psychological as well as physical fallout for most dogs. You look at these videos, these before and after videos, you think you got a calm dog, and really you just have a compliant dog temporarily. The dog has just shut down emotionally. The dog is shut down emotionally. And when you're in that kind of stress, to think that an animal is going to learn and learn reliably and retain that is ridiculous. If you know anything about neuroscience, if you know anything about physiology, if you know anything about biology, about what happens when you're in fight or flight and you're a dog, and dogs have the cognitive abilities of about a two-year-old child. But here's the kicker. When you're in fight or flight, when you're in that anxiety, that stress, that fear, you're in survival mode. And the thinking part of the brain, the frontal cortex, the neocortex, shuts down. Your brain is hijacked by the amyglia that deals with fight and flight. And that's more of the older instinctive part of the brain. My point is you can't use thinking, executive functioning, and especially if you're a dog, that really shuts off and it's limited when you're in that level of stress and anxiety. Our job, whether you're a trainer, whether you're a behavior consultant, whether you're a behaviorist, is to pair positive things, positive experiences with the trigger, presenting the trigger in a very controlled way, at a distance that's very safe for the dog, where the dog's not feeling uncomfortable, where the dog's not engaging in the unwanted behavior, and start pairing that presentation and association, whether it be a dog that the dog is reactive to, whether it be a person that the dog is reactive or aggressive towards. You want to pair positive reinforcement. Now, you can't do that and expect to make a change if you're too close and the dog's reactive. You can't do that if the dog's too close and maybe you don't see outward physical signs, but internally the dog is stressed out and anxious. You literally got to start at a distance from the trigger where the dog doesn't have a care in the world. Now, think about it. Imagine if I were videotaping a counterconditioning and desensitization exercise, and I've got a dog that doesn't have a care in the world. We're looking at a dog, say 50, 100 feet away, or a person 50, 100 feet away. Maybe that's the magic distance for this particular dog where it doesn't care. And we bring out the trigger and we start feeding the dog or playing with the dog, creating fun, positive associations. That's not exciting. It's boring. And that's one of the reasons, you know, balanced trainers are always saying, hey, if you're a positive, force-free trainer, wear the videos. Show us your work. Well, first of all, most of us are too busy doing real behavioral work. We don't have time to be videoing everything that we do. And we're not doing it for drama effect. First of all, if the problem is a dog that's reactive and aggressive, we don't want that behavior. Anyone can set the dog up for failure for a quick video clip, you know, bring a trigger too close to the dog. The dog blows up, has a meltdown. You've got this dog going crazy. You've got 20 seconds of that video. Then they start working with the electronic collar, the prong collar, punishing the dog, shutting the dog down around a trigger. And now all of a sudden you see another 20, 30 seconds, maybe a minute, of a dog walking by people, walking by other dogs, seemingly not caring. It's smoke and mirrors. It doesn't last. Now, a lot of balanced trainers will say, Well, you're living in a fantasy world with this force-free training. You don't understand. You must not really work with difficult dogs. Well, first of all, I've been training dogs for a half a century. Longer than most people have been alive that are training dogs today. And I work with the most difficult. That's why I'm a certified behaviorist. Because I work with the most difficult dogs, dogs with extreme fears, phobias, anxiety, extreme reactivity, extreme aggression, extreme prey drive, extreme poor impulse control, and low tolerance for frustration, the most complex behaviors, intra-dog aggression, intra-household, two dogs or more in the same home fighting. Dogs with severe, serious bite histories. Don't tell me I don't work with severe. I work with very severe. And then the balanced trainers will say, well, he doesn't understand negative reinforcement. He doesn't understand positive punishment because they think I've never used it, right? They think, well, if he's a fear-free positive reinforcement trainer, he doesn't have a clue unless he's been there done that. Well, guess what? I've been there. I've done that. I'm what's called a crossover trainer. See, I wasn't always force-free. I wasn't always positive reinforcement. I was a balanced trainer. And quite frankly, before I was a quote-unquote balanced trainer using rewards and punishment, I was a compulsion-based trainer. Because when I started training in the 70s, I don't know anybody that was using positive reinforcement. It was all about forcing the dog what to do. Now, throughout my journey, I evolved because I'm committed to constantly improving. I'm committed to constantly learning and to constantly be more effective. And the learning part is what's really important. You know, I hear from a lot of people that when they're calling around looking for a trainer, somebody to help them, especially with aggression or something like that, or reactivity, or anxiety, stress, fear, that they talk to these trainers and the trainers are willing to come out to their home and do a free evaluation. Folks, very little in life is free. Remember that. Nothing in life is free. There's a kicker. Quite frankly, these trainers that are offering these free in-home evaluations is really about a meet and greet and about a sales pitch. They're not evaluating your dog. Because a real professional that has formal education is going to do a functional behavior assessment. A real professional not only is going to do a functional behavior assessment, they're going to put together a training plan that involves applied behavior analysis. It's going to involve a training plan where there are measures and it's going to be force-free. It's going to be positive reinforcement. It's not going to involve punishment. It's not going to involve fear, pain, or intimidation. And this is going to be backed by the overwhelming scientific consensus that this is the most effective, most efficient way to train a dog and the most reliable. If you want permanence and reliability, if you want something that's going to last. But the problem is that most trainers, because it's an unregulated industry, unlike, say, medicine, I can't call myself a doctor. I'll go to jail. Yeah. It's a regulated profession. But here's the thing: the beautiful thing about medicine being a regulated profession, and really a real profession. And what separates a real profession from one that isn't? First of all, formal education. That gives the consumer some confidence that the person they're working with knows what they're talking about. But it goes beyond the formal education into board certification. You've got to pass very strict, very rigid certification, testing, interviewing, case presentations. You've got to prove that, hey, this formal education you have, you can actually apply it in the real world. That you know what you're talking about. You can actually do. It's not just book knowledge, you can actually apply it, board certification. In addition to that, they don't want you to be stagnant. Things change. Science changes. Things we learn more day in and day out, and we improve upon what we do day in and day out. And the only way that that's going to happen is by staying up to date and current on the latest and greatest evidence-based, science-based methods, research, information. And so, a real profession, there's continuing education, mandatory, continuing education in order to keep your certification. And in a real profession, those folks are licensed, and that license can be revoked if you fall away from real science based, real evidence based, real ethical practice. If you screw up, there's going to be disciplinary action. You may lose your license. None of that exists in the dog training world. Anybody can call themselves a dog trainer. They may never have owned. A dog. They can say whatever they want, they can build a website, print whatever they want, publish whatever they want. They can sound like they really know what they're talking about. They may have lots of charisma. That doesn't mean that what they're doing is the most effective, most efficient, the safest, and the best way to work with your dog and improve welfare. When your dog can feel comfortable, when your dog is relaxed, when your dog feels free to make a mistake, and nothing bad is going to happen, because let's face it, in life we all make mistakes. That doesn't mean that we should be punished. Making a mistake means also we didn't get what we wanted. Try again. And listen, when things are not going well in training, it's not that the positive reinforcement doesn't work. It's that what you're doing as the trainer isn't working. And you need to make an adjustment. And therefore, you need to understand that force-free training, positive reinforcement, is very complicated, actually. There is a lot involved. It's not just about giving cookies. That's the biggest myth that everybody makes. You know, for many years I used shock collars. For many years, I used prawn collars. For many years, I used choke chains. When I didn't know what I didn't know. And I didn't know what I didn't know when I didn't have formal education. I didn't know what I didn't know when I wasn't certified and had to really prove what I knew. I didn't know when I didn't continue my education. It's so important, especially if you've got a dog with reactivity, aggression, fears, phobias, anxiety, that you really work with somebody that's a real professional. Now, just because they have a website, and hey, they may have lots of good reviews, too. Most people don't like writing reviews. Most people, when they have a bad experience, actually don't write a review. You don't hear from them. And the trainer that didn't get the right kind of results because they really didn't know what they're doing, they don't call that person back again when things aren't working. They spent a bunch of money, they spent a bunch of time with that balanced trainer. Now the aggression, now the reactivity came back. They realize the relationship with them and their dog is now not close to being the kind of bond and trust they had before. It's gotten worse. And the behavior got worse. That's when they start looking for a completely different approach. That's when they start Googling and learning hey, there are real professionals out there that are behaviorists. And listen, just because somebody calls themselves a behaviorist doesn't mean they are. Where did they get their accreditation from? Where is their certification from if they're a behaviorist? What kind of continuing education are they doing on a yearly basis? Here's the thing next time a trainer says, Hey, I'm going to come out for a free evaluation, say, what does that all entail? And do you do a functional behavior assessment? Ask them on the spot, what is a functional behavior assessment? How does applied behavior analysis work? Talk to me about antecedents, arranging the environment, extinction, positive reinforcement, differential reinforcement, counterconditioning, desensitization. Listen, if they start going blank, if they start going blank, and they can't answer those questions quickly, easily, without fail. You just need to say thank you very much. We're not going to be a good fit. And you find yourself someone who's certified. Look, there's certified trainers, certified behavior consultants. You can find them on the internet. Go to the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers. They've got a directory of certified professional dog trainers, certified canine behavior consultants. Or go to the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants. They certify trainers. They certify behavior consultants also. Or go to the Animal Behavior Society, look for an applied animal behaviorist. Now, those behaviorists, there's just a handful. They primarily are involved in research and academics. A lot of them don't do clinical work, casework with animals and pet parents. And a lot of them don't even work with dogs because they're an animal behaviorist. They don't necessarily specialize in one species. But the International Canine Behaviorist, which certifies behaviorists that specialize in dogs and canines, where I've got my accreditation, I've got my certification with International Canine Behaviorist at iCbdogs.com. And I've got my certified professional dog trainer credentials through the Certification Council for Professional Dog Trainers, where I also am certified and credentialed as a certified behavior consultant. I'm also accredited, certified force-free or fear-free, I should say, trainer. These are the kind of things that you need to be looking for. Not these flashy videos that you see on YouTube. Real training is gradual. Real complex behavior change can be slow sometimes. And it's boring. Good behavior work, we're not seeing dogs fearful. We're not seeing them anxious. We're not seeing them stressed. We're not seeing them reactive. We're not seeing them with aggressive behaviors because we're keeping them what's called under threshold. If we bring them too close and they start becoming fearful, anxious, stressed, reactive, aggressive, barking, lunging, snarling, growling, air snapping, biting, we've set the dog up for failure. We've got them too close too soon to the trigger. That's what balance trainers do. And then they punish them and they suppress the outward behavior. They're not doing anything to change the underlying emotional state where the real magic happens. But it's not that positive reinforcement doesn't work. It's not that you must use corrections to get a very well-trained dog, especially a dog with high prey drive, or a dog that's aggressive or reactive. No. You need to change the dog's underlying emotional state. You need to gradually and slowly desensitize them systematically, change the underlying emotional state, the feelings, the behavior goes away. And then you actually have permanence and reliability of behavior. Well, folks, that music means we are out of time. Hey, hit that like button, hit that share button, give us a five-star review. If you love what we do, please give us a review. That's what helps us rank higher. That's what helps get this information out to more people that can benefit from this. So please, if you've been listening for a while, if you love what we do, or if you just love this episode, think about giving us a five-star review after you're done here. I'm Will Bangura, certified canine behaviorist. You've been listening to another episode of Dog Training Today. Have a good one. I'm out of here.