Gear

In Praise of Positive Reinforcement for Your Pets

You want to reward good behaviors, not use tools to punish negative ones.
a dog with a treat on it's nose
Photograph: Caroline Warren/Getty Images

If you buy something using links in our stories, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

Pet supplies is big business. In 2019, Americans spent $95.7 billion on our pets. With companies vying for pet parent dollars, it can seem like there is a product for everything.  While many of these products can help our pets to live happier, more enriched lives, others are designed to cause pain and discomfort under the guise of training or making your life with your pet easier. 

Let’s step back. In the United States, dog training is a completely unregulated industry. Anyone, regardless of approach or experience, can call themself a “professional dog trainer.” Similarly, pet products are also largely unregulated, so a company can advertise its product saying it will help solve your pet’s behavior problem without having to disclose the reason the tool “works” is because it is causing pain or discomfort to your pet. 

Cultural beliefs about how to live with dogs, cats, and other pets has shifted in recent decades. With children, old parenting advice that relied upon spankings and corporal punishment have fallen out of use and now is considered child abuse. Similarly, there is a growing shift in the way we live with pets.  The kind of coercive or pain-based training methods of containment “training” or management of pets that used to be normal has (or should be) completely relegated to the past. 

Quadrants of Operant Conditioning

Technically speaking there are four quadrants of learning: Positive Reinforcement, Positive Punishment, Negative Reinforcement, and Negative Punishment. In this framework of understanding punishment, the language can get a bit cumbersome and confusing because positive means the addition of a stimuli—which doesn’t always mean something good.  But most simply: 

  • Positive Reinforcement means adding desirable stimuli (treats, toys, praise) to increase the frequency of behaviors that we want. So if you give your dog a treat every time she lays down when you eat dinner you are increasing the likelihood that she will do that behavior again.
  • Negative Reinforcement is where a negative stimulus is removed to increase the likelihood a behavior someone wants will take place. So for example, applying pressure to a leash or turning on a shock collar when a dog isn’t staying close to you. In this example the painful stimuli continues until the dog returns to your side. At that point, you stop shocking the dog so the message is that to make the pain stop, they need to stay close.
  • Negative Punishment would be removing something a dog wants in order to increase the likelihood they won't repeat unwanted behavior. For example, if a dog likes to jump up on people when they enter a room, leaving the room or turning away so the dog doesn’t get the attention they want in order to teach them a result they dislike will come from the behavior you dislike.
  • Positive Punishment refers to the addition of negative stimuli, generally pain or fear of pain, to force compliance. The negative stimuli occurs in order to decrease the likelihood the dog will do the behavior again. Positive punishment, for example, includes “alpha rolls,” hitting, collar pops with a leash, and so on.

Although all four quadrants of training “work,” that doesn’t mean you want to use all of them when training your dog. Just like an abused child will “learn” to stay quiet, subdued, and not do behavior they have previously been beaten or punished for, this isn’t the kind of learning modern child development experts would support or encourage. The same is true with our dogs. The American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) has guidelines for professionals who work with dogs and cats, and has explicitly come out against any training methods or tools that utilize aversive techniques. Included in those techniques are “prong (pinch) or choke collars, cattle prods, alpha rolls, dominance downs, electronic shock collars, lunge whips, starving or withholding food, entrapment, and beating.” 

The veterinary experts at the AAHA go on to explain that “aversive training has been associated with detrimental effects on the human-animal bond, problem-solving ability, and physical and behavioral health,” in their guidelines. Trying to control or teach your pet by using pain and intimidation does work, usually for a little while, but it also damages any relationship you may have with your pet. Worse, the desired behavior change you see is usually going to be temporary. For example, people used to encourage cat owners to startle a cat scratching on furniture by throwing soda cans filled with pennies near the cat, or to use a spray bottle to discourage cats from getting onto counters.  All this does is scare your cat, and possibly make your cat afraid of you, but it doesn’t actually teach your cat what you want him to do. 

Unfortunately, you don’t have to look far to see the remains of these old training methodologies in pet stores and online retailers. Products like electric fences that shock your dog to keep them in your yard, bark collars that spray your dog with citronella, or a collar that sends an electric shock, as well as handheld shock collars (more recently rebranded to appeal to consumers as “e-collars,”) are all easy to find. 

Avoid Tools That Promise a Quick Fix

Zazie Todd, PhD, author of Wag: The Science of Making Your Dog Happy, explains, “all dogs can benefit from learning with positive reinforcement, and dogs can learn at any age. Even if you have a jumpy, mouthy, teenage dog who has never been trained, they can still learn – and positive reinforcement is the best way to teach them.” Unfortunately there is no quick fix to training dogs and no product can just “fix” challenging behavior. As a trainer myself I’ve found that too often companies claiming their products will fix your pet’s behavior are instead preying on the trust of pet guardians who understandably assume that if something is being marketed with the picture of a cute pet on the packaging that it is humane. 

Just like you didn’t learn how to read or be a responsible adult overnight dogs there is no quick fix for teaching dogs appropriate behavior if they have something else ingrained. Unfortunately the market is saturated with products that promise to fix dogs quickly, and these tools are marketed to dog owners who just want to do the right thing but are overwhelmed with options. Prong collars and choke chains, as well as shock/ecollars (which Petco just removed from their store shelves in favor of encouraging positive reinforcement training instead,) are marketed to help people walk their dogs without pulling. However, these collars don’t actually teach dogs to walk calmly on leash, they work because they hurt your dog every time you put pressure on the end of the leash. 

Bark collars that either spray citronella or use electric shocks are some of the most common harmful products that “work” by causing pain or discomfort. Some of the more covert tools promise to keep dogs from barking by using ultrasonic or high-pitched sounds that people can’t hear. These products also “work” because while silent to people, the sound is uncomfortable or even painful to dogs. Electronic or “invisible” fences “work” to keep a dog in their yard because it relies on pain to keep the dog contained. Not only is this not ideal, they pose additional dangers as many dogs will run through the fence in pursuit of a squirrel, cat or other dog. At this point dogs can get injured, but then will be afraid to return to their yard as they will get shocked or physically punished again while returning home. 

What the Science Says

As we have learned more about animal behavior, we now know that non pain-based training methods make our pets happier and help them learn better. 

“The scientific research on dog training shows that there are risks to using training methods such as leash jerks (often called “corrections,”) pinch collars, electronic shock collars, alpha rolls, or other aversive methods. Those risks include fear, anxiety, aggression, and a worse relationship with the dog. And punishing a dog for doing something you don’t like does not teach them what to do instead,” Todd advises. It’s also worth noting that beyond causing physical and emotional discomfort, punishing your dog is actually a great way to get yourself injured. Using pain-causing tools is like adding gasoline to a fire. 

In fact “59% bites in the household come from owners trying to discipline their dogs,” explained Khara Schuetzner, chair of the Association of Professional Dog Trainers in reference to a 2007 study looking at dog aggression. 

Instead, Develop a Common Language

Schuetzner encourages people to think of your dog as a toddler who speaks a different language. For example if  “the only time the 3-year-old gets your attention is doing something “naughty” and you punish the child, what are you teaching? The child learns every time you come towards them you are going to do something which causes pain and discomfort. If you do this with your pet, your pet will start associating you with pain and discomfort.” 

Instead of punishing our pets, she explained, we want to develop a common language. By utilizing positive reinforcement, you can shift your pet’s behavior and help them develop positive associations with people or things that they were fearful of. Similarly, you can teach your pet to do something you want them to do, instead something you don’t.  For example, reward your cat with treats or toys for scratching a cat tree instead of your couch. If your dog that gets extremely excited at the sight of other dogs, use treats to teach your dog to watch you instead. 

If someone promises you that buying their product will fix troublesome behavior, that’s a good sign you want to run the other way. As we’ve said, just like human behavior can’t be changed with the flip of a switch, the same is true for pets. 

Positive Reinforcement Isn’t Just for ‘Easy’ Pets 

Often I hear pet owners, especially those with large, rambunctious dogs, defend using pain-causing tools because they say they tried everything already. However, the key to success is that positive reinforcement training methods don’t force your pet to corporate, they help your pet understand what you want them to do by guiding them to make decisions you want them to make. 

Schuetzner notes that “when your pet does a behavior you enjoy, reward the behavior with treats, praise, toys, and so on. You must figure out what the pet finds rewarding.” Once you know what toy or treat is the most rewarding to your pet, that’s what you should use to teach new behaviors.  After all, Schuetzner says, “would you keep going to work if your paycheck started to get smaller and smaller? Pets do the behaviors that get reinforced during the day.” 

Positive reinforcement methods are the same sort of training that zookeepers use to teach large predators to move from one area of an enclosure to another, or for veterinary procedures.  If a lion, a tiger, or an orca can be taught using positive reinforcement and rewards, it’s a methodology that will work for any dog or cat, regardless of how large, strong, or boisterous they may be. 

More Great WIRED Stories