The short answer is yes, as a general trend, humans have used similar techniques and approaches to dog training over time. There is “correction” training, which focuses on eliminating unwanted behavior; “bond-based” training, which relies on development of strong human-dog communication; and “positive conditioning”, which is based on transactions, ie the exchange rewards for desired behavior. All of these methods are documented in a variety of pre-modern cultures around the world.
Before digging into the more specific information we have about how ancient and medieval people trained dogs, it’s worth noting that dogs have some traits which make them unusually straightforward to work with. First, like other canines, dogs are social animals and cooperative hunters. As a result, they have strong communication skills, an understanding of concepts like fairness and apologizing that are crucial to maintaining relationships, and ritualized aggression displays (such as barking or air snapping) designed to avoid violent conflict. Second, dogs have been selected over the past 40,000+ years for behaviors and physical features that enhance their ability to communicate clearly with humans. This isn’t a one-way street either-- children who have never met a dog are able to read canine facial expressions and body language with great accuracy from photographs alone. Finally, the canine genome is more malleable than the genomes of other domestic animals due to an unusually high number of transposable elements*-- this basically means that dogs are more likely than other species to develop novel traits like new behaviors or body shapes. From a behavior perspective, this means that we can breed dogs with an astonishing variety of “built in” behaviors that merely need to be shaped rather than taught from scratch*.
For about 11,000 years, the Inuit have raised dogs (qimmit) to pull sleds and hunt animals, including polar bears. Traditional training methods take advantage of canine social learning by pairing newly weaned puppies with fully trained adult dogs on sled runs. The pups learned commands by copying the older dogs. Correction training was also used to discourage behavior such as pulling against the rest of the dog team. Sir John Franklin’s accounts of the Arctic corroborate Inuit traditional training practices.
Ancient East Asian cultures also seem to have relied predominantly on rewarding and shaping naturally occurring behaviors. Accounts of early Chow Chow and Tibetan Mastiff indicate that the dogs were allowed to roam the house or sheep pastures as needed. The first explicitly educational work on dog training in the Western world is Verro’s Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres, written in the 1st century BCE, which similarly recommends that guard dogs “should be trained to watch by night and to sleep shut up during the day.” He suggests food rewards as the best way of rewarding sheep guardian dogs, as well as rearing them with the sheep from puppyhood to encourage their protective instincts towards the flock. However, he does suggest it’s appropriate to hit the dogs if they attempt to chew off their protective leather collars!
By the 2nd century CE, Arrian’s treatise on coursing Greyhounds strongly recommends that “If the dog has caught the Hare, or otherwiſe behaved well, you should dismount and encourage him, and pat him, stroking his head, and putting back his ears, and calling him by his name…” and that a hunter should “speak to the dogs, for they rejoice to hear the voice of their master, and it is a kind of encouragement to them to know that he is present, and a witness of the excellence of their running.”
Further Reading:
Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution by Raymond and Lorna Coppinger
Dog Behavior: The Genetic Basis by John Paul Scott and John L. Fuller
On Coursing Hares by Arrian aka Xenophon the Younger
Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres by Verro
**HMU on r/AskScience if you’re curious about the nitty-gritty of canine genetics