Stephen Haynes practices guidance training when it comes to using corrections in dog training. He uses just the right amount of feedback in each moment of guidance to achieve better training outcomes.
Neither dog owners nor trainers like corrections. Who does... right? The word is negatively associated with something harsh, unpleasant, and unwanted. No one likes to be corrected, and that includes your dog. What is far more appealing to trainers is to provide guidance by giving small amounts of input or direction instead of heavier corrections.
How Professionals Handle Corrective Dog Training
My name is Stephen Haynes, a professional dog trainer and behaviorist of 21 years. A major difference between a novice dog trainer and a professional is how we perform corrective dog training. This includes how we develop our skills to reduce corrections yet provide more information to the dogs through guidance. After many years of training, we have come to understand that corrections come in many gradations and shades of intensity. We know when to use each intensity from very light guidance, such as a jiggle of the leash for a distraction and a reminder to a sharper correction to stop a lunging canine. We also know that gentle, light guidance often provides more value in teaching than something harsher and more confusing to the dog.
Professionals always use input that is just strong enough to change unwanted behavior and convey the message we need to get across. If the dog is calm but wanders out of the heel position to sniff a tree, they may get a slight guiding jiggle of the leash to remind them that they have a job to do, and it’s time to start paying attention again. They will get a stronger correction if they make a larger error and try to charge across the road toward a pet on the opposite sidewalk. At that moment, we need to cut through the excitement and adrenaline they are experiencing to get the message across. Just like humans, getting our attention does not take much when we are calm. It takes a fair bit more oomph to get us to focus when we are excited and highly distracted.
In the dog training world, we do not have many tools or devices that can make this variable adjustment between guidance and correction for us on the fly. Instead, trainers learn to modulate these through years of experience and practice. When done correctly at just the right level and time, dogs learn new skills faster and can apply those skills in different situations and locations more comfortably. Containment systems have never been able to provide this modulation of guidance intensity in the past. It’s always been a preset level, and that’s all there is.
An Innovative Approach to Corrective Dog Training
SkyShepherd has taken the best of what professional dog trainers do through experience and practice and built it into their system. SkyShepherd works differently than most containment systems. Until now, wireless fence systems would beep or vibrate to warn the dog that it was close to the fence. If the dog didn’t respond, the collar would correct the dog at a set, pre-defined level. It didn’t matter if the dog was excited, calm, or just playing around. Hard or soft, the correction was the same for all states of energy. Trainers don’t like this and neither do the owners nor the dogs.
It’s much better to have a containment system that gauges how excited your dog is and adjusts the correction accordingly, just like a professional trainer would. SkyShepherd does this by delivering progressively higher levels of feedback the further your dog pushes its boundaries—starts off low, then builds higher as necessary.
So, if your dog wanders around and quietly bumps into the boundary perimeter, it gets a gentle vibration to guide it to turn around. If your dog is on scent, not listening, continuing to push its boundaries, then SkyShepherd feedback rises automatically to meet your dog’s attention and guide it back. The SkyShepherd system knows where your dog is, where it should be, and will reward it with a safe tone when it’s done the right thing and turned back. There’s nothing else out there in the market that does this. SkyShepherd developed this technology with the help of professional trainers and behaviorists, making it so unique, it’s patented.
Using SkyShepherd unlocks the skills and techniques that professional trainers spend years honing, all within a revolutionary system designed to safeguard your dogs and keep them exactly where they belong. This ingenious approach ensures a stress-free learning experience for your furry companions by precisely applying corrections at opportune moments and at the proper levels. Corrective dog training done the right way empowers them to grasp new concepts swiftly without fearing unnecessary reprimands while they enjoy and explore the world around them.
