Natural vs. Contrived Negative Reinforcement
I read the following online the other day: People shouldn’t object to the use of negative reinforcement! It’s just stuff like washing my hands when they are dirty or drying them when they are wet. What’s wrong with that? This is a fairly common defense of using negative reinforcement (R-) in training. The defender points out that R- is common in life and trots out a benign-sounding example or two. Here’s a quick review of the definition of negative reinforcement: In negative reinforcement, a behavior is strengthened by the removal, or a decrease in… Continued
It Was Coming Right At Me!
I am so interested in how dogs perceive things, and how they notice differences that we don’t, or that we take for granted. Those differences can matter to them a great deal. An example of that was the focus of my recent post, “Intruder in the Yard!,” about Zani’s response to a landscape timber in my yard that had rolled out of place. Clara, with her feral puppyhood, appears to discriminate between people to an extreme. She socializes with a few people besides me now, but each person has behaviors Clara is comfortable with, and everybody’s… Continued
“Good Sit!”
Here is a quiz. Let’s say someone says, “Sit,” to a dog, intending the word as a cue. What part of speech is the word, “Sit”? Then, what part of speech is the same word if we say, “Good sit!” afterwards? That was a trick. If we were talking to a human who speaks the same language we do, the first “Sit” could be an imperative or command verb. The second “Sit” would be a noun. But neither of those, while grammatically correct, applies to training a dog. Dogs are not humans. “Sit” is something… Continued
But Every Dog is Different!
But every dog is different! This is another common argument against trainers who train without force. It usually goes like this: But every dog is different! You can’t just use a cookie cutter! But every dog is different! Why limit yourself to only one method? But every dog is different! Some tools just don’t work with some dogs! The implication is clear: Trainers who use primarily positive reinforcement are slaves to one method, which we apply to all dogs. We deliberately limit ourselves, despite the wealth of methods available to us.… Continued
Are You Really Performing Classical Counterconditioning?
What do the following training descriptions have in common? “My dog’s afraid of strangers. But when she stops barking and makes eye contact with me, I give her a treat.” “I hold her foot. Then I give her a treat after I clip each toenail, as long as she stays in place and doesn’t pull her foot away.” “When we have guests, I wait for him to show some calm behavior like stretching, breathing more deeply, or lying down. Then I give him a treat.” “We play LAT (Look At That).… Continued
6 Ways to Prepare Your Dog for Fireworks Starting TODAY
Oh no. Noisy holiday rolling around again, and your dog is scared of fireworks? Even though it’s just a few days before the holiday, you can make a plan and take action to help your dog be less afraid of the unpredictable scary sounds of fireworks, firecrackers, whistles, and even guns. Get Ready Here are some things you can do today. Get some great treats and start carrying them around. Whenever there is any kind of sudden or startling noise, including stray bangs and booms as people start to test their noisemakers,… Continued
Introducing a Puppy and an Adult Dog: Take it Slow
Remember “Lessons for My Puppy,” my collaboration with Marge Rogers? She made some videos that I loved so much that I wrote blog posts to go with them. Marge is still out there working with dogs and making great videos, and I’m featuring another one today. Although there is a lesson for a puppy in this video, and also a lesson for the adult dog, the biggest lesson here is for puppy owners. (Isn’t that usually the case, when you come to think of it?) In the video she shows how… Continued
You’re Too Close! Dogs and Body Pressure
So you are standing at a party, or in your office, or on your front lawn. Someone you know only vaguely walks up to you. He walks up very close, face to face, close enough that you can see up his nose and smell his breath. He starts a conversation. What do you do? What you desperately want to do is step back! You may or may not do it, depending on the social situation or a host of other reasons. But when someone we don’t know well enters our personal space bubble,… Continued
Yelling at My Dogs
The “yelling” question comes up regularly for positive reinforcement-based trainers. “Am I a bad person if I yell at my dogs?” “Is it positive punishment to yell at my dogs?” And the accusatory version, “Do you NEVER yell at your dogs? Of course you do! And that’s punishment, so you aren’t a ‘positive’ trainer after all. Gotcha!” Rather unbelievably, I’m not going to go into a quadrants discussion here. Wow. But check out “Only if the Behavior Decreases” if you want to address the question of whether yelling can be punishment. Instead,… Continued
Trick Training Bloopers
I decided a while back to teach my dogs to cross their paws as a trick. I followed the instructions on one of Emily Larlham’s excellent videos: Dog Tricks Tutorial: Cross Your Paws. But I didn’t end up making the neat, quick progression shown in the movie when I tried it with my dog Summer. I think that besides my rather clumsy training, it is just not a very natural behavior for her. I used a target, and when I finally got the behavior (sometimes), it took a long time before she… Continued
The Dog Decides
“The dog decides what is reinforcing.” Positive reinforcement trainers frequently say that to their human students. What they mean is that people can easily be mistaken about whether something constitutes reinforcement. For instance, we may think praising or petting our dogs are reinforcers, but if they do not cause behavior to increase or maintain, they are not. Dogs don’t sit down and make cognitive “decisions” about reinforcers; that’s just a semantic shortcut. But their subsequent behavior is what tells us whether something is a reinforcer or not. If you give your dog a piece of… Continued
The “Choice” Challenge
Thanks to Debbie Jacobs and Randi Rossman for their input on this topic. Any weird conclusions are mine alone. I have come to believe that most of us who thought we were using “choice” as a reinforcer were mistaken. Wait! Before you come running after me with pitchforks, let me explain. I’m not saying that choice isn’t a wonderful, enriching, and humane thing to provide for our dogs. It can be all that! Rather, I’m concerned about the trend of glomming onto attractive-sounding language without proper analysis of what is actually happening. The problems attending… Continued
Loving the Vacuum Cleaner
Here’s a little video I made of my dogs’ response to the vacuum cleaner. Hurray for classical conditioning! As soon as any dog comes into my home, I start pairing any potentially scary sounds of human life with great stuff. Two of my dogs weren’t scared of the vacuum in the first place, and taking this action greatly decreased the chance that they ever will be. (Sound sensitivity can appear as dogs mature.) Zani, my smallest dog, is potentially sensitive to quite a few noises, but we have turned her attitude around… Continued
You Don’t Have to Go Through the Door Before Your Dog!
When Annie Phenix of Phenix Dogs recently mentioned to me that the “door myth” is still alive and well, I got to wondering what that actually would look like. The advice to always precede your dog through the door is propagated by those who think the key to having a well-behaved dog is to be a good “pack leader.” They also say to always eat before your dog. I had a guy recommend that after seeing one of my YouTube videos. How inconvenient is that? What a hassle! Instead, you can actually train your dog behaviors… Continued
Accidental Punishment
I charged straight into a positive punishment scenario by accident recently. I’ve been somewhat in the training doldrums lately, probably because I am putting so much energy into finishing my book. I have several training activities that I fall back on when I don’t have much energy. They are fairly unchallenging for me (read: I can’t mess them up too badly) but still fun for the dogs. Even those have been hard to do lately. But the other day I had some time and energy and decided to play a shaping game with each dog. We don’t… Continued
Sink or Swim: Eight Ways You Might Be Flooding Your Dog
Thank you to Marge Rogers, Debbie Jacobs, and Randi Rossman for discussions regarding this post. The point of view expressed and any mistakes are solely my own. The journey of becoming a positive reinforcement-based trainer sometimes seems like an endless stream of goodbyes to methods I once used. Goodbye prong collar (yes, I used one). Goodbye collar pops. Goodbye pretending to eat out of my dog’s bowl before she did. (Yep!) Goodbye forcing my dog’s butt down if she didn’t sit. Goodbye making my dog back up by walking into her space.… Continued
But It Worked for My Dog!!
What happens when someone shares a “success” story about training with aversives? Here’s my response to a commenter who did so on one of my previous posts. A Parable Once there was a woman named Reva who had a serious health condition that needed intervention. Her intexagog was inflamed and could rupture any day. Reva looked up intexagog specialists in the phone book. She found Dr. Bleppo, who had an ad that was both slick and reassuring, and picked him. She made an appointment. He was a likable guy and radiated competence. He said sure, he could fix… Continued
How To Train Your Dog to Stand Using Capturing
When people consider how to teach a dog to stand, they usually envision the action of standing up. They focus on getting the dog up on their feet from a sit or a down. But that’s the hard way to start, especially since by the time most people get to training stand, they have reinforced the dog a billion times for sitting or lying down. But most dogs also stand, right? Unless a dog is very old or has a physical problem, she probably stands frequently. We don’t have to start by… Continued
Please Go Away: Dog Body Language Study
One of the things I am very grateful for in my life with dogs is that my current three get along. They don’t adore each other, but two of them, Clara and Zani, actually play together and are comfortable in each other’s space bubbles. Zani helped “bring up” Clara, even though Clara got pretty obnoxious pretty fast as a pup. And both of them manage to get along with Summer, who would really prefer to be the only dog in the world. Or at least the only female. But thank… Continued
Shaping without a Clicker
Most trainers agree that if there is one thing that the tool called a clicker is useful for in particular, it is for shaping behavior. Shaping consists of marking and reinforcing successive approximations towards a goal behavior. When shaping, the trainer can find herself needing to mark very small or quick movements indeed, sometimes just a weight shift or a breath. When that is the case, the behavior is usually long over by the time one can get food or a toy to the animal. A clicker or other marker can form a “bridge” between the… Continued
Six Ways to Prepare Your Dog for Fireworks
Oh no. Noisy holiday rolling around again, and your dog is scared of fireworks? Even though it’s just a few days before the holiday, you can make a plan and take action to help your dog be a bit less afraid of the unpredictable scary sounds of fireworks, firecrackers, whistles, and even guns. Get Ready Here are some things you can do today. Get some great treats and start carrying them around. Whenever there is any kind of sudden or startling noise, including stray bangs and booms as people start to test… Continued
Not All “Choices” Are Equal
Shout-outs to Companion Animal Psychology for the post, The Right to Walk Away” which covers the effects of offering that particular choice in animal experiments, and encourages us to apply the concept to our animals’ lives. Also to Yvette Van Veen for her piece, “A” Sucks “B” Stinks What Kind of Choice is That? , which definitely has some “rant” commonalities with this post of mine. We positive reinforcement-based trainers often point out that our dogs have the choice not to participate in a training session. I think giving the animal “the right to… Continued
Let Rats Decide
I generally write a lot about dog body language in my blog. I discuss letting animals have a say in how and when they are handled and touched. I talk some about how to perceive their answers through observation. And I have shown, in my most popular post of all time, dogs communicating “yes” and “no” about whether they want to be touched. It’s a mini lesson about body language as well as a proposal that we let the dogs decide whether they want to be petted. So you can imagine I was delighted… Continued
Before You Share That “Cute” Dog and Baby Picture…
First things first. I didn’t write this with you in mind. Let’s not make this about your dog or your parental decisions. But there’s a problem with sharing that “cute” dog and baby picture. The problem is bigger than your individual situation, your family. The problem is that posting a picture such as the one above sets an example and feeds a dangerous myth. A myth so dangerous that people die because of it. Children, especially, are hurt, and sometimes die because of it. The myth is that good dogs, family dogs, your dogs–don’t bite. The myth… Continued
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