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IMO, positive reinforcement is the only approach to use with an aggressive or reactive dog if you expect to make any improvement without worsening the dog's fear or getting bitten. Saying "no" and correcting the dog is only going to make his/her association with the scary thing (dog, person, etc) even worse, thereby increasing the aggression... because you have increased the fear. Basically, it goes like this:
dog sees dog --> handler says "NO!" with a leash pop --> dog may stop, but dog is thinking, "when there are dogs, bad things happen. Dogs are HORRIBLE AND I DON'T LIKE THEM!" --> dog increases aggression to keep other dogs away, to keep punishments from happening
^ and then it's an endless cycle. Trust me when I say it doesn't work and it makes things worse. When I started working with my own dog's reactivity, he couldn't see a person five hundred yards away without barking and lunging. Now we can walk down Main Street (busiest street in my town) without him going berserk. I didn't accomplish that by tugging the leash (even lightly); I accomplished that by starting from a distance where he wasn't reacting and playing LAT. Once he was comfortable, we moved up -- and yes, that involved treats. Lots of them. And HOURS of time.
Fine, your method may work for a while. But there's a high possibility that it will backfire and the dog will become more aggressive or reactive, and you're never going to have a truly relaxed dog if it's expecting corrections every time it sees a trigger.
dog sees dog --> handler says "NO!" with a leash pop --> dog may stop, but dog is thinking, "when there are dogs, bad things happen. Dogs are HORRIBLE AND I DON'T LIKE THEM!" --> dog increases aggression to keep other dogs away, to keep punishments from happening
^ and then it's an endless cycle. Trust me when I say it doesn't work and it makes things worse. When I started working with my own dog's reactivity, he couldn't see a person five hundred yards away without barking and lunging. Now we can walk down Main Street (busiest street in my town) without him going berserk. I didn't accomplish that by tugging the leash (even lightly); I accomplished that by starting from a distance where he wasn't reacting and playing LAT. Once he was comfortable, we moved up -- and yes, that involved treats. Lots of them. And HOURS of time.
Fine, your method may work for a while. But there's a high possibility that it will backfire and the dog will become more aggressive or reactive, and you're never going to have a truly relaxed dog if it's expecting corrections every time it sees a trigger.
