Balance training involves four quadrants that form operant conditioning. You either reinforce a desired behavior to increase the likelihood that your dog will repeat it or correct the undesired behavior so your dog won’t do it again. Positive Reinforcement- reward based training- something good will happen for good behavior, increasing the likelihood of it happening again. For example: You ask you're dog to sit, it sits and you reward (giving a treat, praise or a toy). Negative Reinforcement- Something is removed so the desired behavior is likely to happen again. For example: Your dog constantly pulls on a leash when out for a walk. You stop walking and keep pressure on the leash. When the dog sits or comes back, the pressure is released and rewarded. the dog thinks "if I walk beside her, I don't feel uncomfortable." Positive Punishment- is adding something to an undesirable behavior to decrease the chance of the behavior happening again. For example, if your dog runs out of the door when you open it, and you put on a leash or tie him up. You added something (the leash) and reduced the frequency of the behavior. Note: Some positive punishment tools may not work as the dog may think you're playing. Example: if you hit your dog on the nose with a newspaper, it might try to bite it in a game of tug. Negative Punishment- taking away something your dog enjoys to reduce unwanted behavior. For example: your dog gets to rough during playtime. You take the toy away. This tells your dog that rough behavior equals no fun. This quadrant teaches dogs that good things only come with good behavior. The Facts - Other methods take a lot of time and patience. Most people are impatient and don't have the time to train. - Now a days, everything is expensive, so most people don't have the money or even the resources to continue with either positive only method or punishment only method. - Every dog is different- some may prefer treats and others prefer toys or praise and others just don't care about any of those. - When trainers suggest a positive only method because it doesn't "hurt or scare" the dog, but what if the dog is frightened of loud noises like the sound of a clicker? A positive only trainer may try to find something else but what if nothing they deem positive work? Balanced trainer's are very flexible and not fixed on one method. Before any tool is used such as a training collar to “correct” a dog, The dog must first learn and understand the desired behavior. This will avoid any stress and anxiety when performing these exercises. When the dog understands the behavior that is being ask, a correction is introduced. To introduce a correction, the dog must learn "leash pressure" and that they have full control on when that pressure gets released. Dog training is very complex and this method needs to be precise or you can have a stressed, fearful and timid dog.