Reinforcement

You often hear us discuss food as a primary reinforcer for our program dogs. Dogs will also show us that things we don’t intend to be reinforcers actually are- like leaves, smells, other dogs- and that these things can even trump food. When thinking about rewards and reinforcement, it’s important to note what dogs actually like and desire so we can use it to our advantage. We can use those things as both reinforcement (on our terms) and also to help make our desired reinforcers more valuable. We call this value transfer.

For example, if a dog prefers to play ball, we can try first rewarding a behavior with food, then a ball toss. Eventually, the food becomes more interesting, as it is tied to the primary reinforcer of playing ball. Even something as simple as feeding from a puzzle ball will make toys more exciting for a more food motivated dog! The value of the ball is being transferred to the value of food and vice versa in these examples.

Praise, play and touch are common examples of things humans use as reinforcers in training. For many dogs, these things don’t rank high on the list of reinforcers during a work session. (How many of us have gone to pat a pup during training and they pull away?)  As trainers, we all need to actively work to transfer the value of food into praise, play and touch. Fortunately, this is pretty easy to do without adding many steps to our training!

To start, sit on the ground with the dog, and have them “down.” (We sit on the ground to avoid hovering over the dog- hovering creates a feeling of pressure and pressure is not positive!)  Mark and reward the “down” with kibble. Be sure to praise as you feed them (“Good down! Nice down! Excellent pup!”) as they stay in their down behavior. After two or three food rewards, switch to touch while continuing praise. Give gentle pets from the top of the head down their topline.* Then switch back to food for two or three more food rewards. Finally, release the dog from their down.

*For a dog that has a hard time tolerating touch and shies away, you may need to feed kibble as you pet for a while. This is fine! We want them to love touch; feed while touching until they do not move away from it.

Next, you can work on the same steps while asking the dog to “sit” or “stand.” Then you can go through the same process as you stand next to the dog. Progress over time by changing the order to touch - food - touch. Finally, you should try using praise and/or touch as rewards alone every five behaviors or so. For example, if I am working on heel-sit-down-stand-side as separate, consecutive behaviors, I will feed a piece of kibble each for heel, sit, down, and stand, then offer praise and pets for “side.” Then the next behavior will be for kibble again.