Why positive only training?

By "verbal correction" I essentially mean "Get off the table you jerk!". I wanted to make it clear that when I am talking about corrections I don't mean hitting the dog, just communicating my unhappiness. I am definitely on board with the idea that you want a strong, positive relationship with your dog. If you dont want that you probably have no business owning a dog. And, yes its best to teach good manners before bad habits crop up but there is often enough work to be done with things that ARE issues that sometimes things which arent get set aside.

We have a problem in our house with a self-reinforcing behaviour, jumping up on the kitchen table. Generally we keep unattended food out of reach but a couple of times our dogs found some. They are even jumping up there when we are in the room! I'm not prepared to 'just ignore' that behaviour or essentially relinquish our food to doggy appetites. If I don't set a negative consequence with getting up on the table wont their motivation for our food win out every time? What if its both, a negative consequence ("NO!) for jumping up and reward for leaving it alone? I think its really important to keep the vast majority of your interactions positive but surely the world cannot be engineered to be all positive all the time.

Without getting philosophical let me just say I don't agree with the premise that society and human nature is based in selfishness. That said, it makes sense to create incentive for good behaviour, unfortunately sometimes bad behaviour has stronger innate incentives (food on the table is a good example). In that situation you would have to either come up with something more motivating than the bad behaviour or find a way to lessen the bad incentive... or both.

Aversive is the operant conditioning term but I prefer the idea of consequence. A predictable system that offers both good and bad outcomes, I think the system should be set up to create the maximum good outcomes but occasionally its in the best interest of everyone to teach that a certain choice is a BAD one. In those cases the discomfort of the aversive might be WAY less than the possible real-world consequence (eg. a dog that chases animals into the street who wont respond to treats but will respond to an ecollar). Mostly though I think we all agree that minimizing discomfort and unhappiness is the way to go, the world's not perfect though and there is only so much we can control.

Curbsideprophet: I think what Miss Bugs is trying to say is that sometimes the dogma of balanced training or classical conditioning gets in the way of actually finding a solution and being intellectually honest. I think its pretty unfair to suggest that any trainer who isn't aware of classical conditioning and treating it as gospel is horrible. Classical conditioning is a theory like any other and has to be subject to some doubt. Remember how convinced everyone was that the world was flat? Now we are more sure it is round... who knows maybe we'll find out that our fallible human brains can't perceive the world as it truly is and its not any shape at all.

Gally: sometimes fear is good. I never want my dog to be afraid of me but I would like him to be afraid of jumping off our balcony or running into the busy street. To a MUCH lesser degree I would like him to think twice about jumping up on the table. We teach our children (even more cherished beings) that some choices are BAD and unacceptable. The way we teach is different but the premise is the same. Not every option is a good one, choose wisely and you will be rewarded, choose poorly and you will face somewhat unpleasant consequences. Often the world can be engineered to offer mostly motivators (especially in a dogs limited world) but not always and I prefer the job of preparing the dog for the world than the world for the dog.

ofthelogos - I started this thread... as I said at the beginning I'm not an expert by any means, just an average dog owner interested in learning. The intention was really to ask why people are so against "Dominance Theory" and "blalanced training". The thread has taken several twists and turns so at this point the title isnt necessarily a perfect indication of the content. It has been mentioned that no one is positive only so I guess the premise is not ideal.

Curbsideprophet - I mentioned the "flat earth" to illustrate the fallibility of people's belief systems, not to suggest the earth is actually flat. Its really the dogma I wanted to address, the idea that a single system is the ONLY acceptable one and the fact that there needs to be some room for doubt in everything. People who arent familiar with the system you use or don't choose to follow it arent inherently terrible. Its pretty terrible to use force indiscriminately on another living being but I don't think all people who use another system are guilty of that. Essentially we are talking psychology here and even human psychology is as much art as science... for a dogs brain, we can have an idea but fundamentally, who KNOWS what goes on there!