How do you explain R+ training to people who have never heard of it?

[Mrs UB]

I tend to ‘humanise’ it.

Say that I wanted you to pick up that tennis ball and hand it to me - I could either offer you a valuable reward, like a £10 note, or I could threaten to beat you, or actually beat you, until you did it. Which would you find preferable?

Some people nervously smile. Some raise an eyebrow, or two. Some even take a step back! But most have a visible ‘lightbulb’ moment and respond with a “Ohhhh, I see what you mean.”

UncleBob

 

[Selina27]

I could either offer you a valuable reward, like a £10 note, or I could threaten to beat you, or actually beat you, until you did it. Which would you find preferable?

Brilliant Mr UB

 

[Rosie]

All of these!

Ok, in that situation I’d say something along the lines of, “Oh, well our understanding of how dogs learn best has moved on since when I was training Brogan, so I’ve had to update my methods. Get rid of all that dominance stuff which has been shown to be nonsense, even though some outdated people still cling to it”
“We focus more on teaching the behaviours that we do want, rather than expecting the dog to guess and punishing him when he gets it wrong”

I also mention the stats I read about how Guide Dogs went from 50% to 85% success rate when they changed to Rx.

I don’t even attempt it because they’d take one look at Stanners and go - it doesn’t work then

(especially @Jen's.....)