What makes possitive reinforcement training different

Behaviour Modification is when a dog responds to his environment differently this would include obedience training as well.

For example:Instead of jumping on people he is sitting for attention. We put that on "stimulus control" meaning we give the cue and the dog does the "sit" in a particular environment.

The best way to teach this is through Positive Reinforcement

Positive Reinforcement is when we add something good to increase wanted behaviour like treats or attention. I prefer doing this through clicker training where the sound of the clicker is generic and marks the behaviour at the exact moment also letting the dog know that the reward is about to follow. The treat however must still be distinguishable from the click but following within 2 seconds in a way that you control the food delivery. If you control the food delivery you control the pace of the training. It is important to not tease the dog with the treat. Timing in your click and food delivery is very important as you want to be sure to reinforce the wanted behaviour.

You can also make use of Free Shaping when doing clicker training where you will take a natural behaviuor like sit and shape it to a behaviour that you can put on cue.

What is a cue? A cue is a green light. It tells the dog what we want of him. It still gives the dog the option not to do it, just like you can drive over a red light but because there is a positive reinforcer that has been added the dog is most likely to respond to the wanted cue.

This does not mean you cannot say no to your dog, but you don't have to yank or pull on your dog. An aversive method or traditional training also works if done right, but it is scientifically proven that animals and humans learn and remember better through positive experiences. Traditional training is very often fear based but there is not always emotions involved and we all have some of these methods in our tool box mine is just buried down below gathering some dust.

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