# Using corrections properly in competition obedience training



## Poly (Sep 19, 2007)

Here is one explanation of how to use corrections properly as part of training. It comes from this site, which has a wealth of good information on it. 

Success in training your dog begins with you!

_Dog Training Corrections are as the name says; corrections. They are not a training method but the type of consequence to a behavior that a dog has to be very well aware of. If we are applying corrections in situations where the dog doesn’t know what he was supposed to do instead and we rely on the idea that the dog should “clue in” this is unfair and nothing short of abuse.

Many top class professional dog trainers will say that you are to use dog training corrections ONLY when you are dealing with the exercises that your dog has already learned, completed the generalization process for, (and) done the same exercises in “x” number of successful repetitions ...

What you will discover is that if you follow this rule, you will end up using a very small amount of dog training corrections (if any at all) and you will get results from them, when you do need to use them.
_

What do you think about this for competition obedience training in general? How would you apply this to precision heeling?


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## elrohwen (Nov 10, 2011)

I won't argue that corrections can't be used effectively, but I don't personally like to use them. 

For one, I agree that the dog needs to know what you're asking before you use corrections. The problem, for me, is deciding when the dog actually knows what you want. How many reps does that require? Obviously it could be different for every dog. Maybe this is related to how much experience the trainer has to be able to recognize when the dog really "knows" the behavior and I just don't have that experience. There's also the issue that displacement behaviors can look like a dog willfully not doing something that they know, but they could be trying to tell you that something is wrong. Instead of correcting, I think the trainer should stop and look at the reasons why their dog isn't performing and see if there's a creative solution.

My second issue is that I tend to like dogs who are handler soft, and corrections used improperly could result in shut down quickly with some of these dogs. Watson isn't a soft dog in general, and he's not always handler soft (if he's counter surfing and I raise my voice, he isn't particularly put out by it), but when he's really trying to please me and do what I want (as in obedience training sessions), being too firm or using corrections makes him shut down. I'm sure corrections work for some dogs though.

I definitely agree that if you are training correctly, the amount of corrections necessary should be very small. It's knowing when to use those few corrections that I'm not experienced enough to decide. It's easy to over-use corrections until they are ineffective or harming your bond with the dog, so I generally don't go down that road. I will use NRMs sometimes, but I don't consider that the same as corrections necessarily.


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## petpeeve (Jun 10, 2010)

> If we are applying corrections in situations where the dog doesn’t know what he was supposed to do instead and we rely on the idea that the dog should “clue in” this is unfair and nothing short of abuse.


I don't believe this applies to the use of P- as a relatively benign and subtle form of correction. When teaching precision heeling by choice to a green-ish dog, an occasional 'oops try again' is hardly considered abusive and definitely not unfair. At least not in my personal opinion.

I wish the author would've made that distinction, as it seems he is referring primarily to the use of P+, and perhaps to a lesser extent, R-.


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