Reinforcement Training Cheshire CT

Few refrains are heard from dog owners as often as, “But, he does it at home.” A close runner up is, “But, he knows better than that.” In agility circles, these equate to, “He’s ignoring me,” “He just blew me off,” “That jump was right in front of him” and “He’s a real sucker for the tunnel; there’s nothing I can do about that!” The underlying implication is that our dogs do things to spite us, but this flies in the face of what we know about animal behavior.

In a word, it’s all about reinforcement. Reams of scientific studies back one of the basic tenets of animal behavior: An animal will do what works, and what works is any behavior that gets reinforced in some way. Animals are not going to expend precious resources (energy) doing things that don’t get a return. That’s why a lion is going to chase the slowest or weakest wildebeest in the herd instead of expending much more energy trying to take down a robust adult.

The best trainers in the world have a keen understanding of how to apply reinforcement for behaviors they want and how to withhold reinforcement for behaviors they don’t want. It’s as simple as that.

Let’s look at some typical laments and see what’s really going on.

“But, he does it at home.”
Dogs are what are known as contextual learners. What they learn in one location may not be transferred to another location. Additionally, dogs need to be presented with gradually increasing distractions in each location to attain true mastery of a skill. If you...

Author: Terry Long

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