The punishment must be something the animal dislikes and something the animal does not expect.ĭoes your dog dislike it? I can think of several dogs, who would just LOVE a spray of water in their faces! Often they would be the Labrador types who just want to experience water in all of its different forms. Let’s examine the spray bottle technique from the point of view of these rules. One of my favorite trainers, Steve White, has beautifully outlined “eight rules of punishment”, which all have to come true for the punishment to be effective. But in order to be effective, there are certain laws to be followed. When you’re talking behavior, the technical definition of punishment is that it’s anything that makes a behavior less likely to occur again. But that’s true of most kinds of punishment. What I know now is that squirt bottle training isn’t as precise or useful as other methods of training. But I believe more in science-based methods of behavior modification than I do in luck.
Today, I see that the reason for my success with my puppy a decade ago was simply that I got real lucky. Would I use the squirt bottle as a training technique with my clients or own dogs today, with the current knowledge that I have on dog behavior? No, I would not. It made my then-puppy learn to leave the curtain, rug and a corner of the coffee table alone. I have, in my time, used a squirt bottle as punishment.
Why is my lab master trimmer squirting water plus#
A sharp squirt of water in the dog’s face should stop jumping/chewing/nipping/barking pretty efficiently, right? Plus the gadget is cheap, easy to get and shouldn’t really hurt the dog, right? Well, not in my opinion. Dog training with a spray bottle is probably has been going on as long as there have been spray bottles. Some humans have a little handheld tool they use to stop behaviors they don’t like: a spray bottle. We humans want them to stop as quickly as possible. Using a spray bottle on a dog in training is almost always counter productive.