We all knew that kid growing up. The one whose parents never told him no. Whatever he wanted, he got. He largely made his own choices, and it showed. And we all watched, even as children ourselves, how that turned out for him. Not because his parents didn't love him. They just confused never saying no with being kind, and those are not the same thing.
"Purely positive" dog training runs on the exact same confusion.
Purely positive is purely confusing
Here's the part the marketing leaves out: Trainers who calls themselves purely positive still communicate negatives to dogs all day long. Whether they intentionally market otherwise or simply don't realize the negatives they employ, the result is the same.
Watch closely and you'll see it everywhere.- The leash goes tight when the dog pulls, and the dog learns that pulling gets them nowhere. That is a negative.
- The dog jumps up for attention, and the trainer turns their back and folds their arms. That is a negative.
- The dog wants the treat, the toy, the open door, and the trainer simply waits, withholding it until the dog offers something better. That is a negative, delivered by silence.
None of this is cruel. None of it involves fear or pain. But let's be honest about what it is. Withholding something a dog wants in order to change their behavior is communication, and part of what you're communicating is not that, try again. Calling it anything other than "no" is a branding decision, not a training one.
And the branding does real damage. When you build an entire method around never, ever saying no, you don't remove the negatives. You saw the leash tension, the turned back, the waiting. It's still there. What you actually do is take your clearest tools off the table and force yourself to say no in the quietest, sneakiest ways possible, then hope the dog pieces it together. That isn't kindness, it's simply handicapping your communication. Your dog is trying to have a conversation with you, and you've decided half the vocabulary is off-limits.
A dog who has never once heard "no" isn't a free dog. They're a confused one.
What "no" actually means to us
So let's drop the pretending and talk about what we actually do.
We use negatives for clarity with dogs constantly. We can communnicate boundaries by using a single, soft step forward to take space. We can turn away when teeth land on us a little bit too hard to communnicate that was too much. And we can use the forbidden word, No.
When we tell a dog no, we're not communnicating to the dog that they're bad, or even that their current action is bad. We mean one simple, useful thing: Try something else.
That's it. No is just information. It closes one door so the dog goes looking for another, and the moment they find the right one, we're right there to reward it. The no and the yes work as a pair. The no tells them where not to spend their energy. The yes tells them exactly where to put it instead, and makes that choice worth repeating.
A dog who only ever hears yes has no way to understand that better choices are available. Everything gets rewarded, so nothing stands out. Give them a clear, fair no, and suddenly yes means something. That contrast is where real learning lives.
Dogs already do this, all day long
Here's what the purely positive crowd would have you forget: telling each other no is one of the most natural things dogs do with each other.
Spend an afternoon watching a group of well-adjusted dogs and you'll see it constantly. A stiff posture that says back off. A slow head turn away from a pushy greeting. A freeze, a hard look, a lip lift that lasts a quarter of a second. A mother getting up and walking away from a puppy who's nursing too roughly. None of it involves fear. None of it involves pain. It's just clear, honest body language, a running conversation of yes, that's fine and no, not like that that dogs have been having with each other since long before we handed out treats.
Watch a good adult dog with a puppy who's biting too hard. They don't hurt the puppy. They don't intimidate them. They just make it unmistakably clear: not like that. Then, when the puppy plays gently, the game continues. That's a no and a yes working exactly as a pair, delivered by an expert.
So when a training philosophy insists we must only use positives, understand what it's really saying: that we shouldn't communicate with our dogs in a way that is instinctual for them. We should hold ourselves to a rule dogs never hold themselves to. Your dog already speaks this language fluently. The kindest thing you can do is learn to speak it back.
What people actually want
Here's the thing. When people go looking for a "purely positive" trainer, that's almost never what they're really asking for.
What they want is a trainer who will never encourage hurting their dog. Who will never frighten them, hang them by a prong collar, shock them into shutting down, or bully them into compliance. They've heard the horror stories, and they want a guarantee they're not signing up for one. That's a completely reasonable thing to want.
But that guarantee they're seeking isn't "purely positive." It's fear-free and pain-free. Those are the words that actually describe the promise. A trainer can tell your dog no a hundred times a day without a single moment of fear or force, because a clear, honest no has nothing to do with either one.
Relationship Based Training puts clear communication to the forefront because clarity begets trust. We communicate clearly, we tell dogs when to try something else, and we make the right answer so rewarding they want to give it to us again. No fear. No punishment. No pretending we've reinvented how learning works.
Just a dog who understands you, and a family that finally makes sense to them.