Dog training - Praising negative commands?

[tbourner]

This is one for the dog people on here.

 

I like to say there are positive and negative commands.

Positive being things you want them to do (sit, down, wait etc.). If done right these get a reward/reinforcer.

Negative being things you want them to stop doing (off, no, leave etc.). These are in effect punishments rather than negative reinforcers, but they are still commands of a sort (which is why we never use the dogs name to tell them off, it becomes a negative command), when the dog jumps up uninvited we say OFF and expect the dog to desist!

So, if the dog jumps on the sofa without invite and we shout 'OFF', the dog jumps off, do we reinforce that behaviour? Are you reinforcing the chain that began with a negative? Or are you reinforcing doing as you're told 1st time?

 

 

 

As an aside; what are the negative reinforcers for dogs? Apart from the opposite of the positive I suppose (not getting the treat I'm holding is negative, he can stop the waiting if he sits when I tell him, failure results in more negative waiting). Holding the lead is the only one I can think of, he can prevent the lead pressure on his neck by walking to heel? I get so confused with the difference between negative reinforcing and punishing/correcting.