Denise Fenzi Seminar: Rewarding Your Dog

When Denise talks about rewards in dog training, they seem to fall into one of two categories: things or activities.

Rewarding with things is very common in the dog training world; these are the ones that require that you plan ahead and have food or toys available for the reward process. Both food and toys are important rewards. Denise prefers to use toys when she working on happy, enthusiastic performances and food when she’s working on precision, but when it comes down to it, she believes attitude is more important than precision.

Where Denise really shines, though, is rewarding with activities. These rewards are ones that don’t come with something tangible, but instead in doing something. For example, Denise does a lot of personal play with her dogs. This is different than toy play. Instead, it’s about the dog and handler interacting together in a fun way.

You know what's fun? Running!

Denise also talks a lot about making activities in and of themselves rewarding. She told us about a study (sorry Science Geeks, I don’t have a citation) where researchers split kids into two groups. Both groups were told that they were studying some new puzzles, and they wanted the kids to play with them and then answer some questions. The first group was told they would be paid at the end, and the other was not paid. After the kids played with the puzzle for a specified period of time, they were told the researcher would be in to ask them some questions. While the kids were waiting, the group of kids who were not paid continued to play with the puzzles, while the paid group did not.

What does this have to do with dog training? Well, as this study demonstrated (and as many of us know from experience), activities done as volunteers often yield more satisfaction than those done for pay. In other words: we enjoy work more when we find it intrinsically rewarding. Dogs are the same. We shouldn’t need to pay them for things that are fun… and training can be fun! Many dogs naturally enjoy retrieving or jumping or running.

Of course, you have to make the work interesting for the dog. Make it an exciting privilege for your dog, like a child getting to go to DisneyWorld. Teach your dog that if he’s going to work, it needs to be at his full capacity. Or, to paraphrase Master Yoda: Work or or don’t work. There is no halfway.

Be sure that your dog receives one unit of reward for one unit of effort. Denise and Deb talk quite a bit about this in their upcoming book, but basically, if your dog tries to do something that is very difficult for him, compensate him fairly for it- kind of like hazard pay. As your dog gets better at that same thing, you can reduce the amount of reward he receives because it doesn’t require as much effort any more. Doing so often naturally leads to the reduced reward schedule so necessary in trials.

Finally, don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Denise told us that the more things your dog does wrong, the better. Mistakes help a dog understand what won’t be rewarded, meaning that in the long run, he will have a better idea of what will. If you feed your dog so much that he never fails, all he learns to do is to eat, not work. Teach your dog to work.

How do you reward your dog? Personally, I tend to be a bit dependent on things. A lot of this is because I compete mainly in venues that allow me to take food in the ring, so I don’t have a ton of incentive to develop activity rewards. For the few times I do compete somewhere I can’t use food, I’m fortunate enough that Maisy does find my smiles and praise rewarding.

Patricia McConnell Seminar: Science-Based Training?

 Training with dad. Note the clicker in his hand.

A lot of people call clicker training (or positive-reinforcement training in general) “science-based.” But is it, really? What do we know, scientifically, about training dogs? In this, my last post on Patricia's seminar, I'll discuss some of the studies she shared with us.

I'm always astounded by the number of people who don't train their dogs. These are the people that, when they learn I do rally and obedience with Maisy, or that I teach training classes, always laugh and say, “My dog could use some obedience!” I'm usually then regaled with increasingly horrifying stories of near-death incidents resulting from a lack of training. But then Patricia shared two studies that made me wonder if most people even want a trained dog.

The first study looked at 118 dogs. Roughly half had no training, or only one basic-training class. The other half were highly trained agility, schutzhund, or search and rescue dogs. Each dog was tested on his ability to manipulate a box in order to get food out. Twice as many of the dogs in the trained group were able to get the food, suggesting that higher levels of training is associated with better problem solving skills.

The other study tested dogs' ability to discriminate quantities. The dogs were allowed to choose between small and large piles of food; in general, both groups chose the bigger amounts. However, the difference between highly trained dogs and untrained dogs became apparent in the second stage of the experiment, when the dogs watched their owners choose the smaller piles before being allowed to choose for themselves. The untrained dogs typically followed their person's lead, and also chose the smaller amount- this despite the fact that they earlier chose the bigger piles. The trained dogs, however, chose the larger piles, suggesting that training creates independent thinkers.

Independence? Better able to solve problems? Dare I say it: improved ability to think? I really don't think the average pet owner wants to live with a smart dog. Perhaps it's a good thing that pet dogs don't receive high levels of training!

Once we've made the decision to train our dogs, though, the next question becomes: how often should we train them? When Maisy and I were actively attending training classes, we were advised to train in short sessions, several times a day. At the very least, we should try to get in 5 or 6 sessions a week. As it turns out, though, this may not be the most efficient use of time.

Two separate studies found that training once a week results in “better learning performance.” They discovered that dogs acquired the skill in fewer sessions when trained less frequently than when trained daily. (One of the studies also looked at how well the dogs remembered what they'd been taught, and found that the dogs in both groups retained the task equally well.)

I think Patricia put it best: maybe the dogs learned in fewer sessions, but come on: it took eight weeks to teach a simple targetting exercise. Maybe it takes a couple of extra sessions, but by doing several sessions a day, the same task could be learned in just a few days. Still, she said these studies point out the importance of processing time; dogs need rest periods in order to learn most efficiently, especially for more complicated tasks.

Finally, every trainer has to make decisions about how they will train. Patricia shared that there are a number of studies showing that force-based training has negative effects. For example, one study showed that dogs trained with shock collars exhibited more signs of stress, even when compared to dogs trained with “fairly harsh” methods. Another found that punishment was associated with increased behavior problems, like aggression, distractability, and overall lower obedience levels. And the study I found most interesting discovered that punishment was associated with increased anxiety in fear in small dogs, but not in large ones.

There are also studies showing that reward-based training has good effects. These dogs are more likely to interact with strangers, be more playful, and are generally better at novel training tasks than dogs who are trained with punitive methods.

Patricia felt it was only fair to share a study whose results we may not like: it found that search and rescue dogs were more successful in advanced stages of training when there was “an increased use of compulsive methods.” Generally speaking, though, it seems that science favors reward-based training, which leads us to the clicker conundrum: should we use them?

One researcher trained 20 dogs to target a ball with their noses. Half the dogs were trained with a clicker, and half were trained with the verbal marker “good.” The results showed that the clicker trained dogs learned the task faster than those trained with the verbal marker (about 36 minutes as compared to 59 minutes). Patricia believes this is because the clicker makes a short, abrupt sound with a very clear start and stop. It's also a “broad noise band”- it covers more frequencies than the spoken word. All of these things make it more distinct and easier for the dogs to notice.

The last study that Patricia shared with us looked at the use of clickers and food versus food only in training. Thirty-five basenjis were taught to target a traffic cone, and once they learned the task, were variably reinforced for a maintenance period. The researchers found no difference in the amount of time that it took the dogs to learn the task; despite proponents' claims, the clicker was not found to speed up learning.

Then the researchers did extinction trials in which they quit giving food to both groups of dogs, but continued clicking the dogs in the clicker group. The results showed that the clicker-trained dogs were more resistant to extinction, to which I just have to say: DUH. The clicker is a reinforcer- it's a secondary reinforcer, not a primary one, it's true, but it's still a reinforcer. Of course the behavior didn't extinguish as quickly. They were still being reinforced. (To be fair, the study authors state that this suggests the clicker does, indeed, act as a secondary/conditioned reinforcer, and I guess it's nice to have that scientifically verified.)

So, with all of this in mind, will it train the way we train? Personally, the answer is no. I train because I enjoy it. Yes, I have a smarter dog as a result, and yes, that can make her more difficult to live with sometimes (I often wonder who is training who). But I train for the experience moreso than the end result... which is probably why I play endless shaping games but have pretty much nothing on cue. (Sigh.) And my methods? Well, those are unlikely to change, too. My choices have been made on my personal moral and philosophical beliefs, not science.

What about you? Will you change anything about your training based on these studies?

If You Want to Know More

• Does training make you smarter? The effects of training on dogs' performance (Canis familiaris) in a problem solving task, by Marshall-Pescini, et al
• Is your choice my choice? The owners' effect on pet dogs' (Canis lupus familiaris) performance in a food choice task, by Prato-Previde, et al
• The relationship between number of training sessions per week and learning in dogs, by Meyer and Ladewig
• Patricia's blog post on the Meyer and Laedwig study
• The effect of frequency and duration of training sessions on acquisition and long-term memory in dogs, by Demant et al
• Training dogs with the help of the shock collar – short and long-term behavioural effects, by Schilder and van der Borg
• Training methods and owner–dog interactions: Links with dog behaviour and learning ability, by Rooney and Cowan
• Survey of the use and outcome of confrontational and non-confrontational training methods in client-owned dogs showing undesired behaviors, by Herron et al
• Behaviour of smaller and larger dogs: Effects of training methods, inconsistency of owner behaviour and level of engagement in activities with the dog, by Arhant et al
• Obedience training effects on search dog performance, by Alexander et al
• Clicker Bridging Stimulus Efficacy, by Lindsay Wood
• Clicker increases resistance to extinction but does not decrease training time of a simple operant task in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris), by Smith and Davis

This post has been edited for clarity (see comments). It originally said: "Independence? Better able to solve problems? Dare I say it: improved ability to think? I really don't think the average pet owner wants to live with a smart dog. Maybe instead of training the dogs, we should focus on teaching the people how to manage situations better." I think the new version is a better reflection of the study.

Ian Dunbar Seminar: Types of Reward-Based Training (and Which One is Best?)

Ian Dunbar is widely known as a reward-based trainer, and is often credited as revolutionizing dog training. But what people don’t talk about as often is which type of positive training he uses, and why. Today, I’d like to share with you the four types of reward-based training that Ian identified, and what he likes- and doesn’t- about each of them.

Plan A: Lure-Reward Training
Okay, let’s cut to the chase. Ian likes lure-reward training best, and I can understand why. Lure-reward training is generally very easy and fast to do, making it ideal for the average pet owner who just wants the basics, and wants them now.

Indeed, that’s exactly why Ian prefers it. Since dogs will predictably follow a lure, Ian says that you get a 100% response rate right from the beginning. (For what it’s worth, I think that’s an over-estimate. Some dogs are tragically difficult to lure into a down, but even so, you do get a high rate of response.) Because the dog’s success rate is so high, you can easily pair the behavior with the cue from the first repetition, making it the fastest way to get a behavior on cue.

Since the behavior is so predictable, Ian says that you can train with a differential reinforcement schedule from trial two in order to improve, not just maintain, behavior from the beginning. Ian also likes that lure-reward training comes with a built-in hand signal, and that you can work on several behaviors in the same session.

The downside to lure-reward training happens when people do it poorly. When people fail to phase out the lures in a timely matter, they become a bribe. Instead of using the treat to instruct the dog, people often become dependent upon using food to coerce the behavior from the dog. Ian also says that lure-reward training doesn’t always work with adolescent dogs, especially if the lure wasn’t faded out when he was a puppy.

Plan B: All-or-None Training
All-or-none training is Ian’s go-to when lures aren’t working because the dog sees the food as nothing more as bribe- and one less interesting than whatever is going on in the environment. All-or-none training seems to be Ian’s term for “capturing” a behavior. You wait for the dog to do the desired behavior, and then give a reward.

All-or-none training is easy. Either the dog is sitting, or he is not. It doesn’t take much sophistication, and as a result, is well-suited to basic behaviors and novice trainers. The down side is that since you aren’t giving any instructions (like with a lure), it’s hard to predict when the dog is going to do the behavior. In turn, this makes it much more difficult to get the behavior on cue.

Plan C: Clicker Training
Ian rarely uses clicker training, and he never uses it to teach the basics. Instead, he says clicker training is for anything you can’t get through luring or all-or-none training. Since he believes you can lure everything a pet dog needs, he doesn’t introduce it to his students until a level 3 or higher obedience class. Those dogs already have reliable behaviors, and he introduces the clicker to help refine the behavior, make it more precise, or make it flashier.

He doesn’t like clicker training because it is hard to attach a cue. He also believes that people click too often; because he thinks differential reinforcement is the best schedule to use, he believes that it slows down training if your dog is getting clicked more than 50% of the time. This number seems low to me- I’ve heard clicker trainers say that your dog should be getting it right 80% of the time before you increase your criteria.

Plan Never: Physical Prompting in Training
Physical prompting involves applying pressure with the trainer’s hands or by manipulating the collar in order to get a behavior. He includes tools such as shock collars and the Gentle Leader in this category.

Ian says that using physical prompting involves a lot of skill, more than most students have, and that in his experience, gentle prompting often turns into “physical splatting.” He also believes that physical prompting is a crutch which is incredible difficult to phase out.

Honestly, I agree. Although you can use physical guidance to help get behaviors, it is notoriously difficult to get rid of, so I generally avoid it. What I found interesting is that Ian doesn’t think props (like a physical channel to teach the dog to back up straight) are a crutch, and doesn’t find it hard to phase them out. I can’t comment on this- Maisy generally finds props scary, and it’s easier to find a way to teach a behavior without a prop as it is to desensitize her to the prop.


I have used all four of these methods. Most of Maisy’s foundation behaviors were taught with lures, because that’s what we were taught in our big-box store puppy classes. Once we began competition training, I started using a clicker to shape behaviors. I’ve done relatively little capturing and physical prompting, but I have used both. I don’t think any one of them is “best.” Instead, I choose my method based on the task at hand. I will admit that I tend to use shaping a lot because I think it’s the most fun. Still, Ian’s probably right that lure-reward training is easier and faster for the average pet owner.

What about you guys? Which method do you use most? Does it differ if you’re just starting out with a behavior? How do you choose which method to use? Do you think one is better than another? Let me know what you think!