It is a widely held belief that if a dog shows behaviors such as guarding toys, food or locations in the home, urinating on beds, responding aggressively toward family and visitors in and out of the house, or bullying other dogs, the animal is trying to exert its authority in an attempt to become the "alpha" or "top dog" of the family. I see it differently. A dog that exhibits these kinds of behaviors is NOT a confident dog, nor is it trying to unleash an evil plan for home domination. This dog feels insecure and copes with life by trying to control the environment around it. Thus, from the beginning, owners must give their pets the tools they will need to live successfully in a human world. A dog given consistent guidance from an early age grows up to be a confident dog. Education brings security, security brings confidence, and a confident dog has no need to show anxiety-based behaviors, such as those described above.

So, how do you show your dog that you are an effective leader? Modern behavioral science has proven that forceful handling, such as physical punishment, leash yanking, excessive shouting or rolling a dog on its back to get it to submit, is psychologically damaging. Instead, the most successful modern training theories suggest that reinforcing good behavior with rewards, and marking bad behavior with vocal distractions or by simply ignoring the dog, yields much better results. Positive reinforcement (i.e., giving the dog a reward in the form of praise, play, food or toys when it behaves in a way that you like) has been shown to be the most effective training method. There is a marked difference between a dog that has been trained with harsh methods and one that has been trained using positive rewards. The first dog responds to an owner's commands out of fear; the trust between the two has been broken. The second dog looks eagerly at its owner as if to say, "OK, what do I have to do next to get that treat or toy out of your hand?" Ultimately, positive training results in dogs wanting to please and obey their owners. Aversive training, which uses fear-based tactics, often results in a "quick fix" that hasn't truly identified or modified the root cause of the animal's misbehavior. Anyone who says that using rewards in training is bribery should try working for no money and see how they like it. Our dogs were originally bred to work for us, so let's pay them for it!

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