Training Matters

11/12/2024

Sometimes my clients come to me very skeptical that their dogs will change. They've taken the time and spent the money to come to training, but they just don't believe that the behavior can improve. Prompting people along and being their cheerleader takes a lot of patience on the trainer's part. We celebrate every little accomplishment. And, to be sure, making progress is harder for some than for others when misinformation about training has been part of the human's history and long periods of practicing the problematic behavior is part of the dog's history as well.

Recently I had a client who said at the beginning of the last of three sessions to address her dog's leash reactivity toward other dogs that she just didn't think "it will happen for us." This in spite of having told me in their second session of success in getting the dog's attention in circumstances where they hadn't previously been able to.

So it's a huge win when I receive an email like this:

"I wanted to let you know that things are going well.. and maybe I see a little bit of progress?

This morning we saw another dog on our walk. She did an initial bark/growl... but then she looked up at me and I was able to give her a lot of treats and reinforcements as we walked past. I was so happy that it didn't turn into a huge, reactive scene!

I will keep practicing - hopefully we will continue to progress."

I believe that they will.



Picture of my gray-muzzled dog looking at me because I forgot to take a picture of the dog referenced in this post. 🙃

11/04/2024

Repetition and reinforcement of successive approximations of the goal behavior are how teaching is done. Great things can be accomplished using this simple but not easy procedure.

10/31/2024

As spooky season is here in more ways than one, I was thinking of incidents in which my behavior was changed for long periods of time because of a single frightening event. Here's one example: when I adopted the below pictured cutie pie, he wasn't very cute sometimes. In our first days together, he would become what might be called "over-aroused," and grab my clothes or even my arms. My arms were very bruised. He was anxious and scared of many things, particularly men getting too close, and he was a large, strong adolescent dog.

One day in the backyard, he grabbed the hood of my sweatshirt and wouldn't let go. As it wasn't a zip-up, I couldn't just slip it off. While he is big, I am small, and I was truly scared. I did the only thing I could think of to get him to let go of me: use a tug toy with a ball on the end of it to thwack him hard. It worked and I quickly removed the sweatshirt. Yes, I felt badly about hitting him, but not that bad. The behavior needed to end safely.

This morning, for one of the few times since that incident, I put on another sweatshirt that doesn't zip up. I haven't been worried about Winnie's behavior for a very long time. He's no longer afraid of people or anxious enough to engage in scary behavior, although he does have a big bark. He seems pretty sure everyone is here to pet him. Still, and in relation to all other dogs or life in general, I have not worn pullover sweat shirts. I feel the fear again when I see them. I envision the struggle that morning in my back yard. Wearing pullovers seems risky. Why not just wear a zip up?

This is classic avoidant behavior. Our dogs do it, too, and more, in relation to scary events.

My other dog, Stella, enjoyed jumping on the closed feed bin where I keep food for goats, sheep and horses. One day she jumped on it when it was open and fell in. She did not jump on that feed bin again for at least six months. Single, scary events can have profound behavioral consequences. And, first impressions count. Make the most of yours with any scared animal in your care.

10/30/2024

When walking these hooligans around the field behind my house off leash, it pays to reinforce a lot of different behaviors, carry some high value food in my pouch, and walk them before their meal when they are most hungry.

In trainer speak, if I have identified a lot of behaviors to reinforce, I am working with many ‘degrees of freedom’ around a central behavioral goal: not crossing the property boundaries. Reinforcing only a single behavior (say, walk next to me) would likely lead to too low a rate of reinforcement to keep them with me instead of persuing something more interesting. In this case, I reinforced look at me, walk next to me, return to me, sniff the boundary and come back, respond to a cue for attention, come when called, and possibly more that involved not crossing the property boundary. Regarding the treating strategies, I am making the most of ‘motivating operations’ by using high value food to reinforce those behaviors and making sure the dogs aren’t already satiated with food so that what I am offering is valuable to them.

No dogs were lost or crossed property boundaries in this group walk.

10/21/2024

So many thoughts on this one. First: Misbehavior of Organisms in the grabbing behavior. (I'll link this classic piece in the comments for those who don't know it.)

Second: paying close attention to head position in reinforcing in the traditional approach would be critical. It seems good head position was accomplished with the targeting procedure. Reinforcing around the “problem behavior,” so to speak, keeps the rate of reinforcement high and the focus off of only the head position, reducing mistakes in timing about that. Reducing duration of the bird on the scale for a bit also helps to address the grabbing in re-training the scale behavior.

As Bob Bailey says, most training problems have to do with timing, rate, and criteria of reinforcement: timing of reinforcement delivery is off, the rate of reinforcement is too low, and the ask of the animal is too high. And these appear to be the elements the constructional or looping or pattern approach, whatever we want to call it, addresses that aid in reducing the grabbing behavior and increasing what the trainer here calls "calm" behavior of being on the scale. This will be a good video to present at our workshops here at Lemon's Hope Sanctuary for attendees to analyze.

Solving vulture scale grabbing the constructional way:Dallas is a 15 year old imprinted turkey vulture working with a new trainer. She pulls at the turf of h...

10/19/2024

While I understand any learning to be cognitive learning, this procedure adds a step: asking the animal to wait to perform a requested behavior until it is cured to do so. We sort of do this with dogs when we ask them to wait at a doorway until we cue them to move through it. But it’s generally a two-part rather than three-part process: cue to wait and then to release, as opposed to cue to wait, cue the release, then cue to perform the release. Some trainers might put this process under the label of impulse control. These folks consider it cognitive learning. Whatever the label, it’s all behavior and learning.

10/17/2024

10/16/2024

Just the right time for this.

Halloween provides an opportunity to carefully expose your dog or puppy to a lot of novelty. Just remember to start with something small!

10/11/2024

Because this has been a previously expected lores topic.

There's a pretty old video on my channel that still gathers views today on a regular basis. It is my old video on Desensitisation and Counter-Conditioning.

Here's the main ideas of that video:

- **Desensitisation and Counter-Conditioning**:
- Desensitisation involves exposing a dog to a stimulus at a low intensity where fear or reactivity is unlikely to occur.
- Counter-conditioning pairs an unpleasant stimulus with something positive (e.g., food) to change the dog's emotional response.

- **Classical Conditioning**:
- This automatic response process underpins desensitisation and counter-conditioning.
- Dogs form emotional associations with experiences (e.g., car rides leading to the park vs. the vet).

- **Practical Example**:
- For a dog reactive to bicycles, desensitisation would involve gradually reducing the distance to bicycles while keeping the dog calm.
- Counter-conditioning pairs the presence of bicycles with rewards, helping the dog form positive associations over time.

- **Threshold Management**:
- It's essential to keep the dog "under threshold," meaning they are calm and not reacting to the stimulus.
- The distance to the stimulus should be reduced progressively based on the dog's comfort level.

- **Engage-Disengage Game**:
- A method used to help dogs engage with a stimulus and then voluntarily disengage, reinforcing calm behaviour.

- **Ping-Pong Approach**:
- Occasionally increasing the distance to the stimulus before decreasing it again can help keep the dog relaxed during training.

- **Trigger Stacking**:
- When multiple triggers are present (e.g., bicycles and prams), it's important to increase the distance or reduce the number of triggers to avoid overwhelming the dog.

- **Response Substitution**:
- This involves replacing undesirable behaviours (e.g., staring) with desirable ones (e.g., looking away) using positive reinforcement.
- It aligns with the concept of Differential Reinforcement of Incompatible Behaviour (DRI).

- **Environmental Setup**:
- Proper arrangement of the environment (e.g., maintaining enough distance) ensures the dog is more likely to exhibit desired behaviours.

If you are interested in it, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/_KzODk89fiY

10/11/2024

What Debbie Jacobs says here is important to consider in relation to training of any species, not just dogs. When trainers don’t understand how behavior works, at the worst they may do damaging things. At best, they may not be as effective as they could be. Understanding how behavior works is especially important with animals exhibiting challenging behaviors who have experienced trauma and/or neglect. Thanks, Debbie, for your PSA.

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