Tag: positive dog training
Humor, Repetition and the Classical Condition
28th October
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Yesterday, I did a piece on Reframing the Dog’s Understanding of the Door. A couple of the comments pointed out some gaps in the one ‘how to’ paragraph. That paragraph was not meant as a lesson plan, it was just a quick hit explanation of the technique. Today’s installment is also not meant as a lesson plan. This piece is about some concepts we can use to desensitize our dog to the classical condition.
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Pavlovian Humor – Make Their Drive a Joke
Humor is essentially taking people down a common path and popping them out into an unexpected destination:
“Three guys walk into a bar,”
The listener knows what’s coming: a long drawn out story about a minister, a priest and a rabbi, or something like that. Eyes roll,”Oh no, not another one… this is going to … Read More »
STARR Protocol – Setting the Tone with Layla
9th October
Apryl Lea and Layla work on Setting an Appropriate Tone for work at the beginning of a work session.
Layla is a foster here @ PVybe HQ and is available for adoption through Mid America Border Collie Rescue
Formats available: MPEG-4 Video (.m4v), Flash Video (.flv)
Tags: reactive dog management, starr protocol, dog training, threshold, pa
Variable Reinforcement
5th July
When we start with marker training, the reinforcement schedule, or reward schedule is a fixed ratio of 1:1 – 1 Behavior : 1 Reward.
This is a candy machine. Think about a candy machine for a moment.
What happens after the candy comes out? Do we hang out or do we leave?
What if no candy comes out or the machine gives the wrong candy? Do we put more money in? Heck no! That candy machine stole our money. If nobody’s around it might catch a beat down.
Candy machines that don’t pay out or give us the wrong kind of candy violate the rules of a 1:1 reinforcement schedule. It’s not playing fair, so we get frustrated and avoid losing more money.
As our dog gets better at learning or when the skill we’re working gets stronger we need to … Read More »
Positive Marker
5th July
A Positive Marker is an excellent tool for communication. Pinpointing and isolating the action that is to be reinforced gives us a tremendous boost in understanding and dramatically speeds up the learning process. The positive marker is used to communicate the exact moment that a behavior was correct.
Take a sit for instance, as many people teach it:
Call the dog, “Spot!”
Cue and lure the sit,”Sit.”
Dog moves forward, stops, squats, butt hits the floor, and looks at the cookie (if we’re lucky, looks at his handler…)
“Good boy!”
Then Spot gets a cookie.
Well, what part of that process actually earned the cookie? We don’t know. Only Spot knows. Was it the walking forward? Stopping? Squatting? Butt hitting the floor? Looking at the cookie or the handler? It’s about a 2 second long chain of behaviors that lead to that consequence.
By inserting … Read More »
The Importance of Using a Positive Marker in Dog Frisbee
20th October
Because Discdogging is a complex game made of many behaviors: biting, dropping, chasing, catching, retrieving, establishing position, it is very important that our dogs have a clear understanding of their job.
A positive marker “Yes!” can pinpoint the moment that the dog has performed a correct behavior, and when we attach that positive mark to a good reward, such as another disc, the dog not only knows what behavior was expected, but is also much more likely to do the behavior again.
Clear communication and reward history will help your dog understand what is asked of him and increase his desire to perform those behaviors.
Let’s look at how a well timed positive marker and consequent reinforcement help the game of disc.
Dropping a disc
Not many things are more frustrating than trying to get a dog to drop a disc at a distance when the … Read More »
From Controlled Chaos to Purposeful Play
12th October
Bitework for Behavior
First off, Tugging is not Tug of War.
Tug of War is about ownership and control over an object – to the victor go the spoils.
This is probably the biggest mistake people make when trying to understand the game of Tug. Anyone who talks about Tugging being unsafe, or “Never let your dog win!”, or tries to force behaviors on their dog in order to ‘make them behave’ during a game of tug is probably confusing Tugging with Tug of War.
Tugging has nothing to do with dominance or aggression.
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