Using Positive Reinforcement to Encourage Your Pup to Engage with You!
Build a stronger bond with your pup through training!
What is Positive Reinforcement training?
Positive Reinforcement, or +R, is part of Operant Conditioning! Not helpful? Okay, so the basics of it are that you are giving something to your dog that they want in order to encourage them to repeat a given behavior that they just performed. +R is a technique that is based in psychology, involves building an association between an action and a desirable result, and is utilized to train dogs, cats, zoo animals, and more! These are the basics of what you need to know, so feel free to scroll down to the next section if you want to get to the training. If you want to learn more about Positive Reinforcement, keep reading!
Operant Conditioning is a teaching method that involves building an assoication between a given behavior and a consequence. There are four “quadrants” within Operant Conditioning: Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement, Positive Punishment, and Negative Punishment. Contrary to common sense, the positive and negative do not refer to good/desirable and bad/undesirable. Positive refers to adding something and negative refers to removing something. Reinforcement and punishment are more direct: reinforcement refers to encouraging the animal to perform the behavior again at some point in the future and punishment refers to trying to reduce or remove the liklihood that the animal will perform the behavior again. To provide a real-life example, if your dog is generally a barker when he sees another dog, and this time your dog saw another dog and did not bark at it, you could encourage the dog to do that again in the future (reinforcement) by either giving (positive) the dog something it likes when it notices another dog and does not bark, such as a treat or play time with his/her favorite toy) OR you could take away (negative) something it does not like, such as pressure on a leash (however if your dog generally lunges at other dogs, taking away leash pressure may encourage them to move towards the other dog, but that is an issue for another time). If your dog was barking at the other dog and you wanted to discourage this behaviour (punishment), you could either add (positive) something the dog does not like, such as yelling at the dog, or take away (negative) something the dog does like, such as your attention or a toy. Does that make sense? Feel free to shoot me a message with questions! It took a few days for my Master’s program cohort to entirely wrap our heads around using positive (adding something) and negative (taking something away), in this manner and not think of them as good/desirable and bad/undesirable. So! Going forward in this blog post, we will be talking about using Positive Reinforcement (+R) to encourage our pups to pay attention to us! In later blog posts, I will explain why I prefer to use Positive Reinforcement Techniques over the other three quadrants of Operant Conditioning.
How to start using Positive Reinforcement:
In order to encourage the dog to perform a given behavior, you need to be able to communicate to the dog WHICH behavior you are focused on. To do this, you need to be able to “mark” the behavior with a given cue. Have you ever heard of clicker training? This is one method of marking a behavior. Basically when the dog does the behavior you want, you “mark” it with a small device that makes a clicking sound when you press a button. Sounds simple, right? It can be! But it does take a bit of practice!
First, you have to build an association between the “marker”/”cue” and the reward. For a food motivated dog, you can do this by pressing the button on the clicker and then give the dog a treat a couple seconds later. You then repeat this process over and over: click…treat, click…treat, click…treat. It’s important that there is a small gap between the click and the treat because you want the dog to anticipate the treat coming, but not expect it right away. It is a lot easier to mark a behavior at exactly the right time with a click than it is to give the dog a treat at exactly the right moment every time. Once the dog begins to associate the click sound with a treat coming, you can begin training!
HOLD ON! How do you know the dog has begun to associate the click with food coming…? Okay, so when the dog is no longer looking at you, make the click sound and then watch to see if the dog turns towards you. That is a good indication, but can mean the dog is interested in the sound, rather than anticipating a treat. If the dog turns towards you and looks at the hand you often give the treat with or looks at the treat bag you are using, etc. this is a slightly stronger indication!
Okay, but what if you don’t want to buy a clicker OR you’re forgetful and would not always remember the clicker while out on walks, etc. No worries, you can use a word as your cue/marker. This is not likely to be quite as accurate as the timing you can get with the clicker, but if you practice, it will work! I use the word “Yes!” with my dog and it works like a charm! :)
Time to start training your pup to pay attention to you on walks!
Once your dog anticipates a treat coming when it hears your marker/cue, you can start using it to train! You can start this process by taking your dog out on a walk and waiting for your dog to look at you. The second your pups eyes look in your direction, use your marker. It is important that you “click” or say your marker word AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Ideally, you would make the cue sound the milisecond your dog looks at you. This helps you to build a strong association between the target behvior (looking at you) and the reward (treat). Within a couple seconds of making your cue sound, give your pup a treat! It helps to have a treat bag attached to your belt, a beltloop, your leash, etc. As you continue along your walk, mark and reward your pup each time they look at you! Another important note: when you give your pup the treat, give it to them at your side. You want to reward the pup in a spot that is relevant to the desired behavior. In this case, as we are encouraging your dog to pay attention to you, you want them to WANT to be near you. So your pup will begin to associate giving you their attention and being nearby you with something they enjoy (in this case treats). Over time, begin rewarding your dog with a treat 3/4 of the time and with praise (if they find that rewarding) 1/4 of the time. You can slowly build this up and help your dog build an association between giving you attention with receiving positive attention, rather than always getting a treat.
If you are having any issues with this or want additional training help, shoot me a message! Oh, and don’t forget to have fun with your pup!
