© 2009 Who Paws Wins

So what is positive reinforcement?

Positive reinforcement is the way to train your dog.  Apart from being a much kinder method it actively encourages your dog to learn which in turn makes them faster learners and easier to train.  So what is it?  Basically, you give your dog a reward for performing a desired behaviour such as sit or come.  Dogs love rewards just like we do, how many of us would go to work everyday without a reward?  For us it is usually money, for dogs the best currency is treats and the opportunity to get a reward is usually the best motivator there is for your dog.  You may now be saying my dog doesn’t like treats or isn’t food orientated the usual reason is because what is being offered is bland and uninteresting.  See below for some treat ideas, use a variety and always train your dog on an empty stomach so that they are keen!

 

Why use positive reinforcement over correction based methods.

Traditional dog training was based on coercing your dog into position or correcting them for the wrong position.  The check chain (or as I like to call it the choke chain as that is what it can do!) tells your dog that’s the wrong position it does not tell them where the right position is.  For example dog charges ahead dog is checked back dog might learn the point ahead earns him a check but does he learn that the desired position is by your side? No!  A positive reinforcement trainer would reward the dog every time the dog was in the desired position the dog learns that’s where they get rewarded and will offer that behaviour again in an effort to get another reward which they will and so on.  Consequently that behaviour is reinforced.  Once a behaviour is occurring regularly the reinforcement can be switched from every time to occasionally.  Don’t’ stop it altogether as it will keep the behaviour sharp if your dog is often surprised with a treat.

 

What’s it used for?

Positive reinforcement  can effectively train many more behaviours than other methods.  The wonderful heelwork to music routines done by the brilliant Mary Ray would not be possible without such methods, she uses a clicker which is an extremely effective training tool (there will a posting on clicker coming soon).  A process called shaping breaks the longer behaviours such as loose lead walking down into smaller more manageable chunks.  You start small and add on extras much like learning the alphabet, I’ll go into this process more in the loose lead walking topic.

 

Want to know more about positive reinforcement read the excellent book Don’t Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor.