Natural Dog Training

Natural dog training is a method of dog training that doesn't try to change your dog's behavior but works with your dog's natural instincts to help owner and dog co-exist. It differs from traditional dog training methods, which use operant and classical conditioning to create new associations and behaviors in place of problem behaviors.

Traditional Training

Traditional training is typically based on identifying problem behaviors and teaching your dog what you would like him to do instead. For example, rather than allowing your dog to exercise his instinct to jump, you may teach him to sit instead.

To do this, you make sitting more rewarding. You ignore your dog completely when he is jumping and lavish him with attention while sitting. Thus, you create a positive association with sitting and a negative association with jumping. This allows you to phase out behaviors you don't like, creating new default behaviors.

Natural Dog Training

Natural dog training is based on the foundation that neither dominance training nor learning theory training are effective enough in capturing the true nature of the dog.

Natural dog training claims to accept your dog's energy and work with it rather than against it. Thus, rather than teaching your dog new behaviors, it contends that your dog already knows how to perform all the behaviors that you like. The challenge in training is finding situations where your dog can do those behaviors naturally when you want him to perform them.

Natural dog trainers say that dogs want to create harmony within their group. By creating a harmonious group, your dog will naturally fall in line with what you want him to do to make sure and maintain that harmony. It claims that there are no problem behaviors, so nothing needs to be fixed.

Fundamental Laws of Nature

Natural dog training then uses the fundamental laws of nature, such as thermodynamics, conservation of energy, gravity and so on to determine how a dog's energy works to inform its mind. This is based on the premise that dogs don't connect mentally but physically with their surroundings.

Natural dog trainers contend that dogs don't use reason or cognition and don't learn by forming associations, which is what traditional dog training hinges on. For example, traditional training relies on the idea that if my dog is rewarded for sitting, he will not jump. Natural dog training disputes this completely. Instead, it claims dogs learn based on how the energy flows through their body and how that action makes them feel.

Four Steps of Training

Natural dog training is broken down into four steps:

  • Create energy in the dog
  • Channel that energy to the owner
  • Harden this energy to make sure it will withstand instincts and habits
  • Shape that energy into desirable behavior, such as sit, heel, come etc.

However, in the natural dog training method, trainers claim that the fourth step is not that important. If the first three steps are completed, the owner will be the most important piece of the dog's world, so he will naturally perform the fourth step in order to create harmony.

 

Comments