Q&A for How to Punish a Dog

Your dog will only understand if the punishment comes right after the behavior you want to correct. This helps your dog understand.

When your dog does a behavior you like, give it a reward so it learns to repeat the behavior. This is the best way to teach your dog good behaviors.

You should absolutely not flashbang your dog. This could cause serious anxiety for any animal.

One idea is a bark collar. They are relatively cheap and don't hurt the dog when used properly. My family squirts our dog with water when he barks, so he has learned that, unless he wants to get wet, he shouldn't bark.

Do not punish your dog. Instead, treat it with patience, firmness and love. Your dog may have separation anxiety or may be bored. Most dogs that bark incessantly are bored. Give it a chew toy at night or get a cat for companionship.

Tell him to stop and every time he obeys, give him a treat.

Take the dog to the vet to make sure it's hearing and vision were not affected. In the meantime, make sure your dog is comfortable, and keep the house as quiet and calm as possible.

If you do not train a dog how to act when they are around food but only punish or ignore him when he acts in an undesired way, you are only teaching him to fear you. If you place food on the counter and you know that he is likely to counter surf, you are setting him up for failure. If you set up training sessions and take small steps by using positive reinforcement training, I’m sure that this will be resolved. Look for a video on solving counter surfing by Kikopup for more help.

If, for example, you brought your dog to a dog park and you know he is reactive to others, then why should the dog suffer through the scold if it wasn’t his fault he was brought to that situation where he is likely to react that way? Train from a distance away from dogs and people at first and reinforce with high value treats when he is calm on a loose leash. If he does not take treats or is pulling on the leash, the distraction is too close or too hard, create greater distance or train without any distractions at first, then build up the difficulty slowly.

With dogs, punishment does not work because when they are put away or scolded at, e.g., for counter surfing and eating food on the counter, they are still likely to do this when you are not there. You are only teaching them that when you are in the presence, bad things happen. This makes a dog less likely to listen to you. If you use positive reinforcement training, not only will the dog want to ignore the food because it was trained with positivity, but you avoid the use of punishment which comes with many side effects. Look up dog trainers on YouTube that use purely positive reinforcement training. They shouldn’t use any forms of punishment, not even ‘no’ or ‘eh eh’.

Most undesired behaviours are self reinforcing to a dog. If you let these behaviours happen but then redirect him and show him what you want him to do, he will keep doing these behaviours because he is reinforced doing them and then reinforced for coming to you. The same goes if you were to punish him, he is still being reinforced when he is performing the undesired behaviour. However, if you prevent this behaviour from happening, like barking, this cannot be reinforced because it is not rehearsed often. Figure out what the trigger is for the behaviour, prevent it and train around much simpler situations where the dog won’t bark, reward when calm: slowly increase the difficulty.

Consider getting a prong collar, they do not hurt dogs but send a prickly feeling and are used for training. Tug the leash a little once the dog begins to do this and don't be afraid to say "no." Never hit or physically punish a dog when they misbehave and only punish them with words or tugs of the leash right after they misbehave so the lesson will be taught.