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Posts Tagged ‘positive reinforcement’

As in all areas of educating, there are different methods of doing things, and different beliefs about what is right and wrong. In this department you will find topics like religion. The next thing that occurs is that children have different ways of learning. Physical force applied to a bad misbehaving child could get the result you want, or will it. Dog Training might run a close third with questions like Pinch collar, or Choke Chain or none of the above?

Good behaviors can be encouraged in 3 different ways.

1. Positive reinforcement is a reward that encourages a response. When you reward your dog for doing something right, the dog comes back for more and will ultimately repeat the behavior because he wants that positive response.

2. Negative reinforcement means that something is taken away in order to encourage a response. Dogs that are trained with electric shock collars figure out that when they perform correctly they don’t get shocked. After behaving there is no shock, hence he learns to behave to avoid the shock. And idea like this for yourself is that you have figured out that when you leave the house early there is less traffic. Repeated experience with the elimination of the traffic teaches you to leave the house early.

3. Punishment is an unpleasant thing that is added to the situation. The differences with “negative reinforcement” are critical. When a dog growls you might “smack” him and yell at him. When a child misbehaves it is easy to repond with a yelling tone of voice and threats. You get the desired response due to fear of the punishment.

Eventually they all work. The dog will come when you tug his leash really hard. Your dog will come to you if he expects to get a reward. Also, dogs will chase after running people.

If your dog is a bad dog you can yell at him and yank at his leash super hard, sometimes enough to freeze up his body or make his yelp. Or, if he senses a treat nearby then he will give you the behavior you are looking for.

What is implicated herein? Would you rather your dog behaves well for pleasing you or out of fear? It is entirely up to you to decide which way to go.

By

Dr. Marika Zoll

DrDogTalk.com

As in all areas of educating, there are different methods of doing things, and different beliefs about what is right and wrong. Religion would be one of these. The next thing that occurs is that children have different ways of learning. To spank or not to spank, that is the question. How to train your dog might run a close third with questions like Pinch collar, or Choke Chain or none of the above?

Good behaviors can be encouraged in 3 different ways.

1. Positive reinforcement is a reward that encourages a response. Your dog will likely repeat his good behavior if you reward him more than once for that postiive behavior.

2. Negative reinforcement means that something is taken away in order to encourage a response. A dog that is being trained with the use of a shock collar, will do what he is supposed to do when the shock is taken away. The shock is eliminated when he is a good dog. Leaving early for work stimulates you to want to do it again because the result is that you don’t have to drive in heavy traffic. A continued result of lesser traffic reinforces your behavior of leaving early.

3. Punishment is an unpleasant thing that is added to the situation. This is different from “Negative Reinforcement”. Owners yell or smack their dogs for bad, aggressive behaviors. when children misbehave many parents have been known to get loud and in the childs face. You get the desired response due to fear of the punishment.

Ultimately, they will all get you a response. The dog will come when you yank its leash. If your dog believes that he is getting a treat from you he will come. Dogs also chase after their owners when they run in the opposite direction.

Rough or noisy behaviors coming from you can result in the response you wanted when the dog was misbehaving. Or, he will do what you want him to do because he knows he is getting a treat.

Does this mean what it sounds like? Would you rather your dog respond to you out of love or out of fear? It is entirely up to you to decide which way to go.

By

Dr. Marika Zoll

DrDogTalk.com

The biggest secret to training your dog is understanding the process of positive reinforcement. All that’s really required after that is lots of patience and consistency. Most problem behaviors in dogs arise from not understanding reinforcement or from not applying it consistently.

To use it consistently, you will need an abundance of patience. You need to understand the time and effort needed to train a dog. You must also appreciate that you need to be consistent every time you are with your dog, not just during training sessions. This means that you also need your family members and anyone who interacts with your dog to be consistent also.

Positive conditioning means that a positive reinforcement i.e. pleasant stimulus when your dog does some action will encourage him to perform that particular action again. Many dog owners will give lots of positive reinforcements when their dog is doing unwanted behaviors. For example, they give affection to their dog as it jumps up on them when they enter the house. Affection is a positive reinforcement and so the dog is being encouraged to jump up on people.

I enjoy watching the Dog Whisperer on TV. One thing I notice is that owners are invariably reinforcing negative behaviors in their dogs without being aware of it. And this is in spite of the fact that they are fully aware of the process from watching Cesar on the program. The Dog Whisperer is very different which is why the dogs behave differently with him. He is always consistent and only give any attention to the dog when it is calm and behaving in a well-mannered fashion. In nearly all cases that he helps, the problems are with the owner and his inconsistency.

Lots of awareness and self-discipline are needed to stop yourself giving affection to a misbehaving dog. You also need to be aware that any attention, even when it’s shouting at your dog “stop barking”, may act as a positive reinforcement. So, it may be best to respond to unwanted behaviors by ignoring them and turning away from your dog.

Focusing on reinforcing positive behavior is more effective than trying to negatively reinforce unwanted behavior. The more you reinforce positive behaviors, the less the unwanted behaviors will occur.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t stop your dog doing unwanted behaviors. It just means that it’s not part of your training process – it’s just damage control. For example, if he jumps on the food counter, you can just pull him off.

How do you positively reinforce actions you want to encourage? You reward the behavior by giving a tasty treat or by giving affection. Using small tasty treats is probably the easiest method. The treat needs to be given as close in time to the behavior as possible. Because of the importance of timing, the use of a clicker makes the reward process clearer to your dog. The clicker sound is used to mark the behavior precisely as it happens and the treat comes immediately afterwards. I encourage you to look more into the whole subject of clicker training since it does streamline process of positive reinforcement.

Read more about the Secrets to Dog Training, about clicker training for dogs and about dealing with behavior problems in dogs in general.