A Comedy Of Errors: What Anti-Aversive Trainers Get Wrong - a podcast by Ty Brown

In this post, I’d like to tell you about the lie of positive reinforcement. That felt kind of silly and overdramatic to write, but it’s an important topic. Dog training, like any industry, gets very political. People have specific views and wish to teach those views or force them on others. one of these views is the idea of positive reinforcement.


Back in 1994, I started working for a dog trainer. I was just a teenager myself. Up until that point, the overwhelming majority of dog training had been aversive-based, which means that it used a lot of corrections, a certain level of sternness, and certain techniques that not even the toughest dog trainers today would use. But in 1995, we were a few years into a new movement. It went by a lot of different named: Positive Reinforcement Training, R+, Anti-Aversive Training, and others. At the crux of all these philosophies is the idea that we don’t correct the dog. No spray bottles, no training collars. Some even advocate never telling a dog “no.”


Unfortunately, this is all built on a lie.


During the 1990s, dog trainers began to receive inspiration from whale and dolphin training in theme parks. They had been making cool strides in this industry. Of course, you can’t put a collar on a whale, so these trainers were coming up with some very ingenious ways of using positive reinforcement.


Now, I’m a huge proponent of positive reinforcement. It must be an essential element in any training program. That’s non-negotiable. But these wildlife trainers turned dog trainers realized that they could accomplish a lot through positive reinforcement. Sure enough, they were right! this isn’t a revelation to anybody. We all know that we can pull out some hot dogs and teach our dogs to teach basically anything.

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