Dog training: The case for using food lures and rewards

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Lure/reward pet dog training techniques are Efficient, Effective, Easy, Efficacious, Enjoyable, and Expedient. Compared with trying to train using corrections and punishments, lure/reward techniques require less owner effort to produce much quicker and more reliable doggy results.

Lure/reward training is efficient

Housetraining is a fine example. The average dog could think of an infinite number of choice locations to empty its bladder and bowels in the space of a 200-square-foot living room alone. Since the dog could make an infinite number of mistakes, correcting the problem would require an infinite number of corrections, and hence an infinite amount of time. Punishment-training is like the Myth of Sisyphus-an everlastingly laborious and theoretically impossible task.

On the other hand, I can think only of one appropriate place for my dogs to relieve themselves-in the P Zone (underneath the plum tree at the bottom of the garden). Consequently, using lure/reward methods, housetraining becomes a quick and easy process. All we have to do is show our dog where we would like it to relieve itself, and then praise and reward it for doing so.

The same principle applies to other potential behavior problems like chewing, digging, and barking. Teach your dog what to chew, where to dig, and when to bark, and then reward it for doing so. We may extend the same principle to teaching manners. Rather than punishing a dog for jumping up, teach it to sit when greeting people and to jump up only when requested to "Give a Hug!"

There is an additional reason that punishment-training takes more time: the trainer has to wait for the dog to misbehave before it can be punished. Now if that isn't just too silly for words, I don't know what is. Aside from being decidedly unfair to provide the dog with no education and then punish it for breaking rules it never knew existed, what a ridiculous  [Continued]

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