The Theory of Positive Reinforcement in Training a Dog

What I eventually landed on was a positive reinforcement training approach. At the time I did not understand the model, which I will describe below. I did understand that the techniques worked and worked fast. Once I switched to positive reinforcement, Kate’s retrieving went from complete avoidance to acceptable in a matter of days. It then went from acceptable to field reliable much faster than I had experienced with traditional force fetching other dogs.