Training

When I was growing up I was always told that the "best" way to have your dog under control was using force, sternness, and punishment. I did that with a few of my dogs and I'm so sad to say that they are not the happiest dogs in the world because of it. They DO enjoy life and love to be petted and such but you can tell that they were taught by punishment. Now I will say the only reason they're happy at all is cause I did use some reward based training techniques. This has saved them from being so shy you can't even touch them. In fact, my older dog is so outgoing that you can hardly get her to sit still when someone goes to pet her. But my younger one sometimes(not always) pees out of fear/excitement(not sure which) when someone bends down to pet him(But he IS getting better about it now that I'm practicing with him and rewarding him for not peeing versus punishing him for peeing.). Anyways I'm getting off point. I just wanted to say that there is so much I would have done differently if I had known to. Now that I do know, I will train more positively. But sometimes you can't undo the damage you've done. Please train responsibly(as I wish I could have). I will with future dogs but that doesn't take away the shame of how I trained my other ones. Good luck with training! And wish me luck in trying to fix my mistakes!