Here’s an interesting point taken from a presentation found (Yale University School of Medicine) on learning.

“If instruction is heavily based on one style of learning over others, “mismatched” students may often feel uncomfortable while “matched” students may not develop critical skills aligned with other ways of learning.”

This reminded me again of my experience past and present, when i tried to introduce Boudicca to “Do It” training, a form of social learning. Even though we were able to successfully move through the process, i could not help but realize how previous training, constrained to using limited methods and tools, made introducing a completely novel training/teaching method more difficult! So the take away might be, don’t get locked into only using limited methods for teaching dogs! They may have limitations compared to other species, but those limitations are only known to the extent that we have testing! So experimenting is a good way to stave off the effects of aligning one’s self to limited training options as well as limiting dogs to options that may not really suit them under differing environments and conditions. And do keep in mind, my point here is not suggesting using punishment, rather the point is to bring to light there other training/teaching methodologies that fall under learning theory than can be used and/or explained other than only operant conditioning.