Shouting At Your Dog When They Misbehave Isn't Good For Them & Causes Side Effects

Dogs are adorable innocent creatures that truly take our pain away. However, there can be times when they can be a little difficult to deal with. But that doesn't mean you shout at them, as according to a study that can do more harm than good.

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A study (published in Biorxiv) focused on what kind of training method is the most effective for dogs. People usually have two methods of making their pet behave -- positive reinforcement or negative reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement involves you making the dog realise what is right and reward him for all the right things you do. Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, involves shouting and showing aggression if they do something wrong.

They took the help of a sample size of 92 dogs from seven different training schools that adopted the aforementioned training methods. The researchers looked at the number of stress-related behaviours from the pooches during and after a specific session.

The researchers noticed that dogs training using negative reinforcement displayed a more stressed-out behaviour including lip licking, yawning, paw-raising than the other pups.

The researchers also took this a step further and tested samples of stress hormones of each pup involved in the study. They found that dogs with negative reinforcement training showed higher level of hormone cortisol during the training.

According to researchers, "Our results show that companion dogs trained using aversive-based methods experienced poorer welfare as compared to companion dogs trained using reward-based methods, at both the short- and the long-term level. Specifically, dogs attending schools using aversive-based methods displayed more stress-related behaviours and body postures during training, [and] higher elevations in cortisol levels after training."

They conducted a third experiment where they made the dogs find the bowl of treats in a room. These pups were trained to understand that if the bowl is placed in a specific side in the room, it will have a treat, and if the treat is on the other side, it won't have a treat.

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The bowl was kept in random places in the room to understand how the pooches would react to this. Pups with negative training were more pessimistic in their approach and tend to avoid the bowl at a higher rate compared to the positively reinforced pups. This revealed that pups with more stress are also locked with a depressed mindset.

So now you know how negatively training your loved pooch can impact his/her mental health and positive reinforcement is the only way to go ahead.