Q: How do you teach your dog what not to do if you don’t punish or correct them?

A: Dogs don’t understand “right” and “wrong” in the same ways that humans do. Dogs do and repeat behaviors because they are reinforcing to them.

The beauty of positive reinforcement is that we don’t need to show our dogs they’ve done something wrong to stop unwanted behavior. Rather than focusing on stopping undesirable behavior, we work on replacing it by reinforcing a more appropriate behavior instead.

Remember, the more a behavior is reinforced the more it is likely to recur! This works the opposite way too. Sometimes stopping an undesirable behavior is as easy as eliminating the opportunity to practice it.