Kathy Sdao Seminar: The R in Dog Training

To Kathy, the most essential thing to understand about dog training is that consequences drive behavior. Period, end of story. What happens after a behavior happens is the best predictor of whether or not that behavior happens again. There are other important things, of course, and in fact, Kathy has an acronym for them: “Get SMART,” which stands for See, Mark, and Reward/Reinforce Training. (There’s actually a second S- set up- which I’ll talk about in a separate post because there’s a lot of great material there to apply to reactivity.) But the most important is the “R,” so that’s what I’m going to write about today.

The camera caught me mid-reinforcement!

Let’s start with the difference between reinforcement and rewards. Although it might appear that she’s using the two words interchangeably, she’s not. They aren’t the same thing. Rewards are given to an animal; it’s something he earned. Rewards don’t necessarily affect behavior (although they can create good will and enthusiasm). On the other hand, behaviors are reinforced. Reinforcement both causes the behavior to be repeated or occur more often and are contingent on that behavior happening. Reinforcement, Kathy says, is the trainer’s responsibility, not the animal’s.

Obviously, the more reinforcers you have, the better, and the amount of things you can use as a reinforcer is really limited by your own creativity. Classical conditioning will allow you to create a reinforcer. Or, you can use things your dog is distracted by as a reinforcer (this is basically the Premack Principle, and it’s very potent). And, as I’ve discussed on this blog before, cues can also be reinforcing.

I’ve always found this last bit fascinating, if a bit confusing. The truth is, while it’s awesome that cues as reinforcers gives you a lot more options, there are some downsides. You have to put a bit of work into cues-as-reinforcers; the cue must be familiar and the behavior must be fluent. It also needs to have been taught with positive reinforcement only. And then, if you’ve been lucky enough to create reinforcing cues, you need to be careful. If you give them simultaneously with bad behavior- such as when we try to redirect a behavior we dislike- it can reinforce that bad behavior. Oops.

This isn’t the only way reinforcement can go wrong. Remember how Pavlov’s dogs were conditioned to feel happy when they heard a bell that was followed by food? This can happen to anything. So if there are two events that happen sequentially, the way the dog feels about the second event can go backwards in time and contaminate the first. Sometimes this is awesome; dogs learn to love their clickers because they’ve been followed by treats. Sometimes, not so much. Kathy told us that if you reinforce a dog immediately after you’ve punished him, that punishment will become a reinforcer.

Say what? But… yeah, it can happen. It’s just two events getting associated with one another. For example, if you yell at your dog and then immediately praise him for making a better choice, the dog can learn to anticipate being praised after you yell. Or if you give him a collar correction for pulling on leash and then click and treat for heeling, collar corrections can become an opportunity to earn food. If this happens, every time you try to punish your dog by yelling at him or using a collar correction, you’ll actually be reinforcing the behavior and therefore causing it to happen more often!

This also works the other way around. If something bad happens immediately after you’ve offered your dog a toy or some food, then the bad thing can contaminate the good one. This can create a dog that “isn’t food motivated”- not because he doesn’t like food, but rather, because he’s afraid of what it predicts. And this doesn’t have to be punishment. If you try to help a dog get over his fears by luring him into the situation (for example, luring him to you to get a nail trim or to step on a wobble board), you’ll actually make things worse.

But don’t let all this scare you away from using reinforcement! For one thing, even if you aren’t a clicker trainer, it is impossible to avoid (anything that increases a behavior is reinforcement). Instead, avoid the pitfalls by simply separating reinforcement (good things) and punishment (anything scary or bad) with a pause long enough that the dog doesn’t associate the two.

Okay, so you’re ready to reinforce behaviors. You know how to avoid poisoning your treats. So… how do you give them? Experienced trainers know that the way you deliver reinforcement influences the final behavior. Using a marker (like a clicker) will reduce the impact of food delivery because the marker says that’s the behavior. Even so, that marker becomes a sort of cue in itself: it tells the dog that he has earned his reinforcer and that he should go to the location it will likely be delivered. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that only a clicker will tell the dog this; my Maisy has discovered that praise or even just a smile from me means that she should look for her treat. This is why, whether you use a marker or not, the place you give the treat matters so much.

There are three main places to give the treat: in position (while lying down, in heel position, etc.), in order to set up the next repetition of the behavior (for example, tossing the treat away from the dog’s mat when teaching “go to bed”), or “direction sliding” (where you move the dog to the correct location in order to fix a problem such as forging in heel or to further the dog’s learning such as teaching a spin). The option you choose will depend on both the stage of learning your dog is in as well as your final goal. And you may even switch back and forth between locations!

So that’s the down and dirty on reinforcement, AKA, the most important part of dog training. What have you learned about reinforcement? Worse yet, what did you learn the hard way?

Training Tuesday: Three Things

On Retrieves and Jackpots
Maisy still doesn’t have a formal obedience retrieve, and while we may never get the opportunity to use one, I still want to teach it. It’s been a good exercise for me- it’s really helped me pay attention to my timing, criteria, and rate of reinforcement, but that’s all beside the point. I’ve been using Shirley Chong’s method to shape a retrieve, and overall, it’s been going well, but I’ve struggled to add duration to the hold, so that’s one thing we’ve worked on lately.

Now, when I work with Maisy- on any task- I often toss treats on the ground away from me to help reset the exercise. I’ve also mentioned before that I use jackpots while shaping, and my typical method is to click, toss a treat, and then verbally tell her how smart she is as I continue to toss treats, one at a time, on the floor for about ten seconds. Then we return to the exercise.

Last week, while working on holding objects for longer periods of time, Maisy did a lovely four second hold. I clicked and tossed a treat, which Maisy found, then looked at me, eager to start the next rep. I belatedly realized that, hey, that was pretty good, and murmured, “Nice!” The second I said that, Maisy immediately began searching the floor for more treats.

Apparently, I have a jackpot marker.

The Come! Go! Game
I’ve been wanting to write about the Come! Go! Game for a long time, but it’s better with video. It’s also been hard to get video of it, but today, I finally have some! It’s not the best example, but here it is:



The Come! Go! Game is basically the Premack Principle at work. Premack says that you can reinforce a low-probability behavior (coming) with a high-probability behavior (running away). Interestingly, as you do this, the low-probability behavior gains value, and the high-probability behavior loses value.

You can totally see this happening in this video. At first, Maisy runs far away, and quickly, when I tell her “Go!” But, as the game goes on, she not only quits running as far, she also takes several cues to take off running. This happens every single time we play the game. The first few reps are enthusiastic, and then she decides it’s more fun to stay near me, which in the end, is exactly what I want anyway.

However, it does mean that if I ever train an obedience go-out, I can’t use “go!” as a cue.

The Stuff I’m Supposed to be Working On
Last week, at our re-check with the vet behaviorist, we agreed that I’d start working on counter-conditioning Maisy to everyday noises around the house. I have failed miserably at this. It seems like I never have treats handy when I need them, and at the end of the day, I’m too tired to get up and grab some.

I’m posting this publicly in an effort to embarrass myself into doing it. I've already put a glass jar with treats (glass so neither canine nor feline can chew it open) and put it in the living room where I spend most of my time. I've also stashed a clicker there, because even though a clicker isn’t the best tool for counter-conditioning, there are times where it can be helpful.

Next Training Tuesday, I want you all to shame me if I don’t report progress on this, okay?

CU Seminar: Whiplash Turns

Sorry, I don't have a picture of this from the seminar.
Instead, look at this pretty picture of Maisy
at this little park near our hotel in Omaha!
Also, hey, another use for whiplash turns: taking pictures!

Another one of the foundation exercises we practiced at the CU seminar was the whiplash turn, which is a great game to play with any dog, reactive or not. Simply put, the end goal is to get your dog turning his head towards you so fast when you call his name that you think he’s going to get whiplash.

There are endless applications for a whiplash turn. It is the foundation for a brilliant recall. It allows you to get your dog’s attention when he’s distracted. It can even serve to interrupt the beginnings of a reactive response, assuming your dog hasn’t gone over threshold.

Whiplash turns are easy to teach, and the way Alexa taught it is also fun for the dog! All you do is toss a treat to one side, letting the dog chase after it and eat it. (Side note: It’s wise to give the dog a verbal cue signifying that the treat is his- something like “get it!” works great. Giving permission will help him later on when we teach when we teach leave it.) Just as he finishes eating, call his name. The timing here is important, because you can essentially stack the deck in your favor- your dog was likely to look back at you at that moment, anyway. When he does, click and toss the reward treat in the other direction.

Tossing the treat isn’t required to play the game, but it is recommended in the early stages because it helps set up the exercise again. Also, if your dog is anything like Maisy, you’ll get a dog that quickly learns where the treat is likely to show up next, and as a result, dashes off to that location, ping-ponging back and forth like crazy. That’s actually okay because you’ll end up conditioning a speedy and enthusiastic response to your cue.

Once our dogs were doing great whiplash turns with relatively low distractions, we upped the difficulty. Alexa came around holding tempting, tasty treats in a closed fist. All of the dogs naturally ran over to her to sniff her fist. Again, we tried to stack the deck in our favor by allowing our dogs a moment or two to sniff, long enough for them to realize that Alexa wasn’t just going to give up the goods, but not so long that they’d already turned back to us. The goal was to call our dog’s name right at that sweet spot so that we could get a response.

Even so, the responses were generally not as impressive as just a moment before since the exercise suddenly got much more difficult. If we had timed our cue right, the dogs generally looked, even if it wasn’t with the speed and enthusiasm we hoped for. But if they didn’t, it wasn’t a big deal. We simply lowered our criteria and accepted a smaller response. Then we built it back up in subsequent trials.

Anyway, when the dogs finally responded, we clicked and told our dogs to go take the treat from Alexa. Most of the dogs weren’t expecting this, but they sure welcomed it! Giving the treat like this was a demonstration of the Premack Principle: if you turn away from that yummy treat when I ask you to, you’ll get to eat it anyway! This allows our dogs to learn that we won’t always end their fun. They don’t need to choose between us and the fascinating environment, instead, they can get access to it even faster by responding to us.

Maisy and I plan on playing this game some more. While she has a pretty decent whiplash turn, it could be more consistent. There are times where it’s brilliant. For example, at the hotel, Maisy began running down the hallway. She was off-leash (I was tired and not thinking clearly), but I didn’t want her too far from me, so I called her name… and she turned on a dime to come tearing back to me. Talk about brilliant! Then there are the times where she barely responds, like when there are chickens around. Certainly this has to do with the level of distraction present, and like anything else, I need to proof out her whiplash turns, especially if I want them to be useful for reactivity work.

But what about you guys? Have you trained this behavior? If so, how good of a response do you get? What influences this? I’d love to hear if you’ve got any good stories!

The joy of a well-trained dog

Last weekend, my husband and I took Maisy to a local state park. It was a beautiful day: warm, but not too hot, mostly sunny, and perhaps best of all, while the clouds were ominous, it didn't actually rain. I call this the best part because it meant we were virtually the only people there, and as such, there was very little risk to letting Maisy off leash.

Maisy had a great time sniffing new scents, investigating critter holes and fallen logs and such, and just generally getting a chance to be a dog, but despite the awesomeness of being in a new environment, she was really good about staying close. She never got out of eyesight, and rarely went more than 20 to 30 feet before she would stop and look at us. Most of the time, she'd either wait for us to catch up, or wait for me to acknowledge her before running off again.



I also used the opportunity to practice recalls. I purposely chose times she was focused on something else, and would call her. I was thrilled to see a "whiplash" response where she would turn the second she heard her name. When she arrived, I'd give her a treat, and then send her out again, thus using both positive reinforcement and Premack.



All the recalls paid off, too, when I saw a cluster of people heading toward us on the path. Maisy saw them too, and she did hesitate before responding, but she came. I clipped her leash on, asked her to sit in heel position, and waited for the people to pass. As they did, they commented on what a good dog Maisy is. She is, of course, but I tend to take it for granted these days.

Anyway, it was a really fun afternoon. I bought a year-long pass, so I see many more hikes in our future!

99% Positive

Ever since the Suzanne Clothier seminar, where she said that being “all positive” is impossible, I’ve been obsessed with how we ought to use consequences in training.

I suppose that Suzanne could criticize my current obsession; I recognize that I may be overthinking this issue, after all. But let’s face it: this is who I am. I think. A lot. I am fascinated by science and research, and I love dog training, so really, it ought to be no surprise to anyone who knows me that I think about this stuff often. So, given all that, I’m going to continue to think about this stuff.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it is, indeed, impossible to use only R+ methods in training. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try. While there may be times that it’s necessary to use some of the other principles of operant conditioning, my personal goal is to remain firmly in the R+ area 99% of the time.

The other night, I went out with some friends. As it always does, our conversation turned to dog training. We were comparing different methods, specifically the various pros and cons of luring, shaping and capturing behaviors. I shared that for the first year, I lured every behavior with Maisy exclusively, but that she seems to learn faster through shaping.

The next morning, on one of the many dog-related email lists I belong to, the incredibly delightful Crystal Salig responded to a thread about teaching the recall by tugging on the leash. She said:

I used to mildly coerce the first part of recall also- just very light pressure on the neck with the leash and released it when the dog started to move- it wasn't harmful, it just wasn't as good as a completely uncoerced recall. I'm still trying to find a less aversive way to stop when a dog is pulling on leash so that it doesn't hurt or surprise the dog as much. When I switched from lure-reward to clicker training, I started to become even less aversive than I was before- seeing how much faster the dog learned if I didn't even lure him let alone use a physical prompt.

This all got me to thinking about my recent venture with Maisy, specifically her sniffing while on walks. Basically, if she stopped to sniff something without having been cued “go sniff,” I’d been telling her “let’s go” and kept walking. If she didn’t keeping walking, the resultant tug on the leash was a natural consequence of her behavior. And while this approach has been working- Maisy knows that “let’s go” means it’s time to stop sniffing and keep walking- I’ve felt bad about doing it.

Crystal Salig’s post helped me understand why the leash tug didn’t sit right with me. Although my action wasn’t inhumane- it’s not physically painful, nor did it appear to be causing stress on Maisy’s part- it did involve coercion, as minor as it is. I commented to my friends that Maisy learns better when she thinks something is her idea, which is why shaping seems to go faster than luring does. Tugging the leash makes Maisy stop sniffing, but it’s not her idea, so while it’s working, it’s slow and frustrating.

This doesn’t mean I think that what I’m doing is wrong. I wouldn’t have tried it if I did. But I do think there has to be a more positive way to teach this. I’m pretty sure that it includes using Premack.

So, here’s the first draft of my plan: I’m going to be vigilant on our walks. I will heavily reinforce the behavior I want- walking in a loose heel. I will also reinforce eye contact, as paying attention to me is incompatible with sniffing. I will pay close attention to her, and when I see the early signs of sniffing (and I think I can pick them out), I’ll call her back to me, ask for some kind of behavior (heeling, a sit, eye contact- it doesn’t really matter what), and then reinforce the behavior by cuing “go sniff.”

I’m quite sure this will not be the final draft of my plan. These things seem to evolve over time, after all. But from now on, all training has to pass the “feel test”- if it doesn’t feel right, then I won’t do it. And in the process, I hope to become 99% positive.

Suzanne Clothier Seminar: Wrap Up

Wow, who knew that a two day seminar could inspire over a month’s worth of blogging? I want to thank everyone who commented on these blog posts. The discussions we’ve had over the past month have really helped me think about the things Suzanne said in a far more sophisticated manner than I could have alone.

I just want to touch on a few of the highlights from those conversations today. If you haven’t, I encourage you to go back and read the comment threads. There are a lot of smart, dedicated, and talented people in there sharing differing perspectives. Although we dog trainers will probably never agree 100%, it’s nice to consider other ideas, either to refine our own thoughts, or to strengthen our positions.

For me, I have found that the seminar and resulting discussions have strengthened my commitment to positive training, even if the term is a bit of a misnomer. As everyone noted, it is impossible to use solely positive reinforcement. I strive to teach enough foundation skills that I rarely need to stray from that principle of operant conditioning.

Still, there are times when a consequence is needed for a less-than-desirable behavior. The challenge is to find such a consequence which is neither physically painful nor which causes excessive emotional stress. Of course, there is the challenge of defining how much stress is too much, but I’m afraid I have yet to figure that one out. So far, it seems to be a matter of knowing the dog well enough to be able to stop while we’re ahead, but that’s a rather ambiguous answer, and one which is undoubtedly frustrating for the less experienced trainers out there.

I have decided that for my dog, the best way to deal with unwanted behaviors is to use Premack’s Principle. I’ll admit, while I understand the principle intellectually, I don’t quite get why it works so well. At any rate, I’ve had some amazing results with Premack, and so have others.

When it comes to our “silly tricks”- my name for competition behaviors which really only matter because I have a goofy hobby, and not because they’re vital life skills- the consequences for an incorrect response is generally removing the reinforcement or doing a time out. Time outs work well; Maisy loves to train, and she loves to spend time with me. Removing my attention for a short period of time is a far more effective punisher than withholding a food treat.

I do occasionally use mild verbal corrections, but Maisy is so sensitive that I have to be careful with using these. I try to avoid them, as well as no reward markers because they tend to frustrate both of us. Similarly, I use some pressure/release techniques with her, such as body blocks or light physical pressure, but I have to be careful with these, too- she’s incredibly sensitive to physical touch. In fact, I once tried using a body wrap on her, which are widely promoted for reducing anxiety. It did not go over well, and in fact, actually caused more anxiety. Although both verbal corrections and physical prompts can be useful tools which fall on the more positive end of the “consequence spectrum,” they are things which I must use sparingly with my dog.

Which brings me to my favorite part of the seminar: Suzanne’s repeated insistence that we view all dogs as individuals. I love that she says training is humane only when we check in with the dog regularly in order to get his perspective. Can you do this? Is this okay with you? How can I help you? These questions focus on building up the relationship in the name of training, and I’ve always said that training is only about the relationship between me and my dog anyway.

Finally, I think the biggest benefit I got from the seminar was learning to give Maisy the information she needs to be successful. Her statement that dogs look to their people for clues on how they should react really encouraged me to look at what role I play in Maisy’s reactivity. I’ve always known that Maisy is sensitive to my moods and reactions, but being forced to confront that reality at the seminar has really improved my awareness of my own body. Making a conscious effort to remain calm and confident in the face of triggers has gone a long way in soothing Maisy’s fears.

All in all, that weekend was one well spent. I really think I grew a lot as a trainer as a result of the things Suzanne said, and again, I really appreciate each and every one of your comments.