Punishment to decrease and/or eliminate a behavior.

[u/Crafty-Cranberry-454]

Hi, I’m diving more into the world of punishment and I’m a little overwhelmed and confused about a few things.

What types of behaviors can we punish, and at what stage do we add in punishment? Should we punish first and then teach, or teach then punish? Or is it situation dependent? As an example, say your dog is wanting to chase something, should you first train around the thing they want to chase, and show them how you want them to react, then once they have a strong understanding of what you want, add in punishment if they do the wrong behavior. But also I’m thinking, you could be punishing them for simply just not fully understanding what it is they are ment to do in the situation, or is that how you get forever stuck in just managing every situation and always thinking “well maybe this environment is just to hard for them” ?

If you use punishment first, for example, they start lunging or chasing something, you punish them, then show them what you want them to do and reward that, like walking calmly next to you. Is that effective? Will that result in that behavior decreasing and them learning to avoid punishment they need to do this behavior?

Or am i totally miss understanding 😭

I saw someone say that using something like an e collar to instantly punish the dog as it is doing something you don’t want, doesn’t work. They used an example of you being in class doing something wrong and the teacher yells at you, and apparently that alone isn’t enough to change the behavior, how ever if they then sent you out of the class and made you walk down the corridor in shame after, that would be punishment? So you need a marker before punishment? I hope that makes sense because it made no sense to me.

Overall what I’m wondering is, is punishment effective, and how should it be used to ensure it’s effective? I have a behavior my dog does that is undesirable to me, (similar to chasing prey, although I won’t go into all the details as it will be a long post) but I’m trying to figure out if punish (such as an ecollar) will decrease the behavior or eliminate it all together. I can keep everything positive by recalling him every time he does said behavior, but because the behavior is so desirable to him, its likely going to be a case of forever constantly managing him, because doing the behavior is way more rewarding than orienting back to me on his own. So will adding in punishment, then showing him what I want decrease this undesirable behavior?

[u/the_username_name]

I think your comment still says “reinforcement” instead of punishment in the first block

[u/critical_audience_ → u/the_username_name]

Finally! Thank you! I missed that one… was getting crazy here.