The Ultimate Guide to Dog Training. Teoti Anderson
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without even realizing it. The first time your dog saw a leash, it didn’t mean anything to him. He may have sniffed it or been curious about it, but he was just investigating it. It was a neutral stimulus. Separately, your dog would get excited when you took him outside for a walk. His excitement was an involuntary response.
After you took him out on his leash several times, the association with that leash changed. After time, when he saw the leash, he may have bounced with excitement or started barking. He came to associate the leash with walks. The leash was now a conditioned stimulus, and his excitement was now a conditioned response to seeing the leash. The leash meant walks!
Did You Know?
Behaviorist B.F. Skinner created the term “operant conditioning.” That’s why you sometimes hear it called “Skinnerian conditioning.”
Operant Conditioning
Operant conditioning is the process of changing an animal’s response to a certain stimulus by manipulating the consequences that follow right after the response. Behavior is either rewarded or punished. Behavior that is rewarded increases in frequency. Behavior that is punished decreases in frequency.
There are four main quadrants of operant conditioning: positive reinforcement, positive punishment, negative reinforcement, and negative punishment. As these are scientific terms, there are specific meanings to the words “positive” and “negative.” In this case, they don’t mean “good” and “bad.” Instead, “positive” means “to add” and “negative” means “to take away.”
•Positive Reinforcement—Something favorable is added after a behavior, which causes the behavior to increase. If you call your dog to come to you, and you give him a treat when he does, he’s likely to come to you again when you call him. An example with people would be that if you finish a project at work, and your boss gives you a bonus, you’re likely to finish more projects.
•Positive Punishment—Something unpleasant is added after a behavior, which causes the behavior to decrease. If you call your dog to you and, when he comes, you yell at him or plunk him in the bathtub when he hates baths, he is less likely to come to you when you call again. Likewise, if you stay late to finish a project at work, and your boss yells at you for incurring overtime, you are less likely to stay late to work on projects in the future.
•Negative Reinforcement—Something unpleasant is removed after a behavior, which makes the behavior increase. If your dog has a thorn in his paw, and you call him to come to you and then remove the thorn, making his paw less painful, he is more likely to come to you when you call again. If your boss constantly yells at you until you finish a project, you are more likely to finish projects quickly in the future.
•Negative Punishment—Something pleasant is removed after a behavior, and the behavior decreases. If your dog is happily chewing on a bone, and you call him to come to you and then take the bone away, he is less likely to come to you when you call again. If you are late turning in a project at work, and your boss docks your pay, you are less likely to be late with your project next time.
Reinforcement, whether it’s added or taken away (positive or negative), always increases behavior. Punishment, whether it’s added or taken away (positive or negative), always decreases behavior.
Positive training generally makes the most use of two of these four quadrants—positive reinforcement and negative punishment. If a dog performs a behavior you like, and you want it to increase in frequency, you reward it—positive reinforcement. For example, every time your dog sits, you pet him, so he starts to sit more often. You’ve given him attention for sitting, which is rewarding to him.
If the dog does something you don’t like, and you want it decrease in frequency, you can take away a reward and the behavior will decrease—negative punishment. For example, if your dog jumps on you and you ignore him completely, giving him absolutely no attention, he stops jumping on you. You’ve taken away your attention, so the behavior is no longer rewarding to him.
You can use a treat in your hand to lure a dog to lie down.
Training Behaviors Step-by-Step
A cue is the word or physical signal you will use in order to ask the dog to perform the behavior. To get a dog to perform a behavior when you cue him, you first have to teach the behavior. There are certain general steps to follow when getting a dog to perform a behavior reliably.
Step 1: Get the Behavior
There are many positive ways to get a dog to perform a behavior, including luring/targeting, shaping, capturing, and modeling.
Luring/Targeting
Luring and targeting are hands-off methods of guiding a dog through a behavior. For example, you may use a treat in your hand to lure a dog to lie down. As you lower the treat, he lowers his nose to follow it, and then his body follows. Or, you may teach a dog to touch his nose to your hand, making your hand a target. You can then teach your dog to come to you, get on and off the furniture, and get in and out of the car by following your hand target.
Luring and targeting are probably the most frequently used techniques to get behavior. They can also be the fastest, depending on the behavior and the dog. They work very well for most dogs.
In order for luring to work, the lure has to be very interesting to the dog. If you use a boring lure, the dog won’t follow it. So if you try luring your dog during a training session, and he keeps giving up after a few sniffs or ignores you altogether, it’s time to find a more tempting lure.
In lure training, it’s important to lose the lure very quickly, or you and your dog can become dependent on the lure. For example, after you successfully lure your dog with a treat to lie down three times, you will try it without holding a treat in your hand. You’ll hold your hand in the same manner as you did before, as if you were still holding a treat. Pretend that you still have the treat in your hand and use your empty hand to lure the dog the same way you did before. Your dog should follow your empty hand into the down position. Once the dog lies down, you will “mark” the behavior (with a click or verbal marker, which are discussed later in this chapter) and then give him a treat. This treat is his reward for performing the behavior. You’ll lose the lure long before you wean your dog off of rewards.
This isn’t a tactic to fool your dog. Dogs have an incredible sense of smell. Your dog knows that there’s no treat in your hand. What he is learning is your hand signal. By moving your hand downward, you’re actually teaching your dog a hand signal.
If you keep a treat in your hand every single time you ask your dog to Down, he will learn that he should lie down only when you have a treat in your hand. Some owners stay dependent on luring with treats because they are concerned that their dogs won’t pay attention to them unless they have treats in their hands. If you keep a treat in your hand too long with luring, this concern could come true! Be sure to lose the treat quickly when luring.
Shaping
Shaping involves building behavior by reinforcing progressive parts of the behavior. For example, if you were shaping the cue Settle on your dog’s bed, you would first reinforce the dog for looking at his bed, then for moving toward his bed, then for sniffing his bed, then for putting one paw on the bed, then for putting two paws on the bed, then for putting three or four paws on the bed, and finally for lying down on the bed. The goal behavior is for the dog to move toward the bed and lie down on it. In shaping, you reinforce all of the little parts of that behavior that build up to your goal behavior.
Shaping has many benefits. It teaches a dog to really pay attention to your marker (a click or verbal marker) so he knows what behavior you are rewarding. Dogs also seem to retain shaped behaviors longer, maybe because they have to figure out the process. For example, have you ever had someone drive you somewhere and then expect you to know the way when you drive there yourself? You may hesitate at a couple of turns or get confused on a few streets before you find your destination. But when you drive to places yourself, you remember the way better. You had to do