Most dog training involves rewarding the “good” behaviors and “correcting” the “bad” behaviors. This means that both you and the dog need to worry about what is “good” and what is “bad” and react appropriately. This is actually complicated for both of you. Consider this example:

You’re walking your dog on a leash and meet a friend that both of you really like. You don’t want your dog to jump on your friend. So you need to be prepared to yank on the dog’s collar if he jumps and praise him for not jumping. Your dog want to greet your friend but would like to do it without getting yanked on the collar. So many things for everyone to think about. So many confusing signals could be sent. For example, your dog sees your friend and starts running toward them. You get scared that your dog will jump, so you yank them back. What the heck did they just get corrected for? They didn’t even jump on anyone yet. They just got excited and started running toward your friend.

So positive training simplifies the whole thing because you only have to worry about rewarding the behaviors you like. Ignore the ones you don’t like to the best of your ability. How does this work in the example above? You have treats with you on your walk so you can reward behaviors you like. You dog only has to worry about figuring out how to get snacks out of you. You and your dog see your friend. You’re both pretty excited. You give your dog a snack for noticing your friend. You keep providing snacks as your friend approaches. You ask your friend to stop at a distance just out of reach of your dog. You point to your friend and tell your dog to go see them. Your pup runs over toward your friend, you give them the signal that they did a great job and they run back to you for a snack. Is it possible that your dog is going to try to jump on your friend? Yep! No one is perfect. Ignore it. No snack earned.

This works. My dog is short and a jumper. I can now have a conversation with a neighbor and she sits between us periodically getting snacks. When we visit my dad, I drop her leash and tell her to go see “Dad”. She runs at him full speed (looks like she will take him down), gets about halfway, puts on the brakes and runs back to me for a snack.