Servicing Brisbane’s Eastern Suburbs, Queensland.

What exactly is 'positive' reinforcement training?

The secret to all good animal training is to understand that behaviours that are rewarded are likely to happen again. The rewards develop and strengthen the behaviour - they 'reinforce' the behaviour.  Dolphins have been taught this way for years and modern trainers now realise that dogs trained the same way will give equally fantastic performances.

In the late 1930s Professor B. F. Skinner from Harvard discovered that rats and all animals can be taught to perform a series of complex operations voluntarily in order to obtain the benefit of obtaining an essential need such as a piece of food.

Skinner's views that there was no need for punishment in training any kind of animal were at first ridiculed and/or ignored. However, over the years, many people seeking to improve human and animal education have increasingly understood his ideas and adopted his methods.

Positive reinforcement for training dogs was first used in Australia in 1976 at the Kintala Dog club in Melbourne founded by the late David Weston.

In 1966 he had acquired a Miniature Schnauzer puppy that he took aged 6 months to a nearby dog obedience club. He says, "during the next few years I worked hard at learning and applying the knowledge which the club had to offer, and as a consequence I became a Kennel Control Council certified instructor, a full panel obedience judge and President of the Club. During this period 'Fred'  gained his Companion Dog (C.D.) and Companion Dog Excellent (C.D.X) titles.

However, I became increasingly disenchanted with the method of training used by dog clubs in general. Much of the knowledge that supported their method appeared to be based on archaic principles and involve a great deal of punishment and compulsion. Training essentially consisted of jerking the dog in the neck with a choker chain, physically pressuring it into position, and growling at the dog using commanding voice tones.

When the dog responded in a way that was favourable to the handler it was rewarded with a pat and verbal praise. Many of the responses generated were accompanied by a strong fear reaction in the dogs, as could be seen by the lowering of their ears and tails, and an unwillingness to return voluntarily to the handlers''.  ( 'Dog Training , the Gentle Modern Method '(1990) - page 9)

At Kintala Dog Club traditional training methods with check chains, physical force and manipulation were totally banned by David Weston.  More than 30 years later his gentle modern methods are still used there exclusively.

Nowadays many other dog clubs and organisations such as the RSPCA also prohibit the use of check chains. They only use positive reinforcement methods where:

* A new behaviour is broken down into several individual parts, each of which is learned before taking the next step.
* The dog is set up to succeed at every step.
* Any improvement is rewarded - at first usually with food. Food is essential to survival and therefore a much more powerful motivator than a non-essential such as a pat or praise.
* A poor behaviour is simply ignored. The punishment is "not rewarding" and the habit soon extinguishes - as with humans where a poor joke is not rewarded with laughter.
* Once a desired behaviour is learned, food is almost phased out and given on a random basis once in a while. It is replaced with other reinforcements such as praise, toys or life rewards doing whatever the dog most wants to do next.
* The dog realises that it has the ability to affect what happens to it. It will be paid, or reinforced, in return for working correctly.
* Training becomes a win/win situation with both sides co-operating with each other rather than it being an adversarial war of wills. 

Many dog trainers have seen the incredible results of positive reinforcement training with the family pet dog, as well as in dog sports and competitions. Reward based reinforcement training makes rapid progress and is fun for both teacher and student. These trainers have welcomed the accelerated learning curve, as well as the vitality and initiative to experiment, that comes when animals learn because they want to and not because they have to

How Compulsion Interferes with Dog Training

Harsh methods of animal training have been around for thousands of years. Many people today are finding that newer teaching techniques enable their students - dogs, dolphins, horses, pigs, parrots and people - to learn willingly in ten minutes what traditionally used to take ten days.

As a result an increasing number of ‘command based’ traditional dog trainers - some of whom have reached the highest standards in obedience competitions - have changed over to positive reinforcement training procedures. To their surprise they have discovered them to be equally if not more effective and certainly more time efficient.

Their enjoyment of the new training processes, their approach to learning and their philosophy and vocabulary have changed. 'Command' and 'obedience'  become 'cue' and 'good manners', while 'correct' and 'dominate' change to 'show' and 'motivate'.

Like many of the younger generation of modern trainers who have known no other training methods, these older trainers have reached new heights that they never previously dreamed possible. They have come to realise, often with initial reluctance, scepticism and surprise that:

  • Punishment, such as pulling on a check chain or giving an electric shock and the negative reinforcement - i.e. when the pressure is released or the current is turned off - teaches a dog how to learn by avoiding something mildly unpleasant or highly aversive.
  • It is basically unfair to teach a new behaviour by eliminating all unwanted behaviours through harsh words, reprimands, punishment and negative reinforcement. It is fairer, and far quicker, to eliminate guesswork by teaching the right behaviour in the first place.
  • Dogs that are compulsively trained often offer minimal compliance. Some dogs that appear to work brilliantly in reality just do enough to get by to avoid a correction. These same dogs, if trained differently and encouraged to use their initiative and make mistakes, would undoubtedly learn faster and perform even more brilliantly.
  • The correct use of a marker signal, such as a clicker, followed immediately by a food treat, pat or praise teaches a dog what is desirable behaviour (e.g. an eight week old puppy peeing in the right place). It considerably speeds up learning and reduces significantly the time taken to train a new behaviour.
  • "No", by definition, is negative.”No", or its equivalent word in any other human language, comes with a lot of emotional body language. Saying “No!” loudly or crossly might let a dog know his owner is angry and upset. Even if it temporarily interrupts the behaviour (and may therefore make the owner feel good about his or her dog training prowess) “No!” does not teach a dog what behaviour TO DO instead.
  • People often confuse lack of response with disobedience, rather than with lack of understanding. So in frustration they increase the frequency and intensity of the punishment by shouting louder, pulling harder - sometimes both - or turning up the voltage. A great deal of dog training has more to do with an owner's ego than with education of the dog and, in reality, much of it is abuse.
  • If dogs are punished for incorrect behaviour, they often become stressed. When pain or fear is introduced into training an animal starts to wonder what is going to happen to it next. Its mind is elsewhere and so it does not - and cannot - concentrate properly.
  • When they are frightened, unclear and confused as to what is required of them some dogs give up and shut down completely to avoid potentially unpleasant consequences. (Some popular TV trainers mistakenly believe this is being “calmly submissive” and that the dog's behavioural problems are cured.)

    Temporary supression

 

  • Dogs, like people, learn best when there is a relationship based on absolute trust between teacher and student. When there is a war of wills trust usually disappears.
  • Correction based training at group classes is often not much fun or motivating for either the owner or the dog. It can become a chore for the owner and dreaded by the dog. Consequently the dropout rate is high, all efforts at "training" cease and the unfortunate dog has no option but to self-train for the rest of his life. Often he or she ends up in all sorts of trouble.

When dogs learn because they HAVE TO, they learn unwillingly and often soon forget. With positive reinforcement training - especially when used in conjunction with a marker signal that pinpoints the precise required muscle movement before the delivery of the praise, pat or food treat - dogs look forward eagerly to training as one of the highlights of their day. They learn willingly, they remember what they have learned and their repertoires of reliably performed ‘on cue’ behaviours is large because they WANT TO learn.

© Oliver Beverly, C.L.E.A.R. Dog Training, Brisbane

Does Clicker Training Work?

ClickerHand

Alexa Capra is an Italian Level 3 clicker trainer who works with ex-fighting Pit Bulls that have been rescued from illegal East European fighting rings and sent to her facility near Turin for rehabilitation. In 2006 at Kay Laurence’s Wagmore Barn in rural Gloucestershire, UK, she told a conference of clicker trainers from around the world, many from countries like Australia where Pit Bulls are banned, that she and her team had successfully been able to re-home fourteen of these dogs into family homes.

The only training tools ever needed were delicious food rewards, "lots of love and plenty of cuddles which they had never had before", praise and a simple little plastic box clicker. They had never needed to resort to any of the medications that are often prescribed for dogs with aggression or other emotional issues.

Some people who own a clicker frequently use it to call their dog or to attract its attention. When training for the obedience or conformation ring they can sometimes be heard going click-click-click randomly and without having an idea of its true purpose. They then scoff or complain that clicker training is a passing fad, that it is no good and that “clicker training doesn't work!”


For these people of course it can't possibly work as it is being used for quite the wrong reason! They don’t understand the necessity of correctly conditioning the clicker (a la Pavlov) by first spending some days associating a meaningless stimulus (the sound of the clicker or the dolphin trainer’s whistle) to something that is greatly desired - the fish, the dried liver or piece of sausage, the pat, the verbal praise or the tug toy.

Nor do they realise that once the clicker has been adequately conditioned, the proper and ONLY function of a click, always a single click, is NOT to call a dog or attract its attention but to give specific information of "YES, that's exactly right!" and to separate that precise information from the subsequent reward.

The click, like the dolphin trainer's whistle (and unlike the spoken word "YES!") is instant, can be heard from a distance and always sounds the same. It has the additional advantage of being unemotional and totally non-judgmental. If there is no click it simply means that the right behaviour has not yet happened: so the only 'punishment' is that there is no reward.

The dog (or the horse, pig, parrot, chicken, dolphin or person with TAGteach - Teaching with Acoustical Guidance) is not worried about verbal reprimands or physical corrections so can think clearly, readily self assesses and WANTS to try again. As a result, he or she learns willingly and rapidly and can soon perform brilliantly.

Five week old clicker-savvy puppies learn straight away where to 'go'. Even before they leave the breeder they can often do basic behaviours - 'leave it', 'crate', 'mat', 'shake', 'roll over', ‘spin’,'speak', 'fetch' and 'come' - and, moreover, they do so first time on a visual or verbal cue.

Sue Hogben from Perth, Western Australia, is a leading clicker trainer and competitor in obedience, agility and retrieving competitions. "Spinner", one of her Golden Retrievers, achieved multiple firsts in Novice, Open and Utility classes. In 2000, before he was three, he obtained his Obedience Championship title.

Spinner subsequently had an incredible eight perfect scores (including two on the same day) of 200/200, equivalent to an Olympic 10/10 in gymnastics or diving.

Sue says:"I don't believe Spinner would have come nearly as far without clicker training. I think the positive approach (he has never had a collar correction or voice correction in his training) combined with the precision of knowing what the reward was for has built his confidence and attitude. He does not stress out at all on any exercises and if he makes a mistake, who cares! He is my 8th Utility Dog and the first one that was wholly trained with a clicker and he 'understands' his work better than the others who were all trained with some correction in the 'proofing' stage.'

I came from a correction based background and successfully trained dogs for approx 25 years before changing.  I used a choker chain as I was taught by clubs and also taught myself how to do a forced retrieve which I used on approximately 10 dogs. I trialled successfully with these methods, but found them stressful for both myself and my dogs and so gradually taught myself to train without force. The last dog I trained this way was taught with food/toys and no correction and was Top Obedience Dog for several years in WA. 

I then learnt about clicker training in an article by Gary Wilkes (USA) in ‘Front and Finish’ and have used positive reinforcement techniques ever since - as have my students”.

Sue Hogben has now obtained 18 scores of 200 with five different dogs - and she has been the winner of Western Australia's "Top Obedience Dog" fourteen times with four different dogs. Naturally enough her clicker training workshops around the country are heavily in demand!

Like the dolphins at SeaWorld shows, the birds at free flight displays and increasingly human athletes on the winner's podium Alexa's and Sue's dogs are all proof positive (if in fact any were needed) that a clicker, if used CORRECTLY, is indeed an immensely powerful communication tool that works exceptionally well.

Is traditional training on the way out and positive reinforcement training the way of the future?

I read Val Bonney's article, 'It's time to make decisions' in the November 2011 issue of 'The Queensland Dog World' with great interest. Everybody would agree that we need to be asking questions, explaining the options and be open to discussion as to which training choices to make. This article is presented from the perspective of someone who has made the decision to switch from traditional to positive reinforcement training.

For any ongoing debate to be useful the basic terminology initially needs to be agreed. To assist in discussion I firstly offer the following explanations of some terms used in this article.

A behaviour, for sake of the debate, is any action that a living animal is capable of doing. Animals of all species learn behaviour either through desirable or undesirable consequences, operant conditioning (Skinner), or they learn through reflexes, classical conditioning – also sometimes known as respondent or Pavlovian conditioning. Training primarily involves the use of operant conditioning. No matter what the species, every single trainer in the world, knowingly or not, utilises one or more of the four quadrants of operant conditioning (positive punishment, positive reinforcement, positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement) when training any behaviour.

[The technical function of reinforcement is to increase the occurrence of a behaviour. The function of punishment is to reduce the occurrence of a behaviour. Reinforcement is positive when something nice is added to the animal's environment (e.g. food) and it is negative when something nasty is removed (e.g. an electric current is switched off). Punishment too is either positive, when something unpleasant is added (e.g. hitting or turning on electricity) or it is negative when something pleasant (e.g. food or attention) is not given or is removed. ]

'Teaching with Acoustical Guidance'

Sports coaches, dog trainers, people involved with special needs and business people have already booked in for the two day "Teaching with Acoustical Guidance" accreditation on Saturday 11th and Sunday 12th September.  Only twelve places remain.

For a great YouTube example using TagTeach to teach children the High Jump, click HERE

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