[dagmx]

Cesar Milan is a terrible example of dog behaviour training. Most of the dog behaviorist community dissaproves of his methods.

Positive training is much more the norm these days. Cesar's techniques can create terrible feedback loops that create worse behavior long term.

[loceng]

Arguably what works really depends on your relationship, the trust you have or don't have yet with the dog. And we're all mostly speaking without referencing what exactly the positive or negative reenforcement methods we're even talking about, so it's a fairly shallow level of discussion missing the nuances.

[dagmx]

It's not shallow because the comment specifically referenced Cesar's methods. They're very strongly negative reinforcement without much nuance.

[derekp7]

Serious question. Humans have been dealing with domestic dogs for 10's of thousands of years, as work partners and companion animals. Obviously there should be some common methods that have been successful during that time, so why is it that every decade or so we have "new methods these days", instead of having a set of proven methods over the last few millennia (whatever those proven methods end up being)? Why does best practices with dogs seem to change quite a bit on the scale of decades?

[dagmx]

For the same reason our understanding of human psychology changes every few decades. Our scientific observation and understanding evolves.

Just as you wouldn't commit electroshock therapy anymore for people with mental disorders, you wouldn't use shock collars today.

Or the same way we don't recommend corporal punishment for children, it's not recommended to manhandle dogs either.

Dogs respond very strongly to both negative and positive reinforcement. Negative reinforcement unfortunately has the effect of making the dog associate stress or physical abuse with conditioned events. Much in the way that a child will stop doing things out of fear, but it builds up mental scarring.

Particularly many people try and condition dogs to not bark or growl by negative reinforcement. This causes the dog to be fearful of expressing itself and go more directly to biting when stressed.

Anyway Tl;Dr science doesn't sit still.