RJL

Apr 29 2009, 09:03 PM

'Brainwasing Pages' :lol: who could you mean?!

Anyway - I stop barking by rewarding it (yeah - I'm mad) with a 'speak' command and then once I've got that, I bring in a 'quiet' - delivered in a loud, but calm voice with a hand signal - just to confuse the dog into looking (as in 'why on Earth is she moving her hand like that?!') and momentarily shutting up - at which point I jump in with a treat or a toy (depending on what's the biggest turn on for the dog) and go all light and happy and joyous and pretend it's the most amazing thing I've ever seen the dog do!

I only bring in the 'quiet' when I've got the dog actually speaking on command, for a reward, so when I teach the 'quiet' there isn't the added incentive to bark of a real live 'situation' - just me holding a toy saying 'speak'.

It just makes it all a bit more fun :)

I agree about aversives (why do we invent silly pseudo-scientific names for everything these days :P ) dogs and people encounter them in every day life - not a big deal if used in a fair and timely way, as long as the actual wanted behaviour has a suitably nice reward.