Common Mistakes that can Delay Training Success

The idea behind positive reinforcement is to cause dogs to repeat actions humans desire, and in time have a repertoire of behaviors that make them good companions and canine citizens. It is a realistically achievable goal. In theory, positive reinforcement is as effective as positive punishment, which in operant conditioning is the delivery of something unpleasant to stop an unwanted action from recurring. More importantly, positive reinforcement strengthens the relationship between dog and owner, dog and his social group, and generally dog and the environment, while positive punishment comes with a high probability of ruining it. I argue that one cannot have true companionship with a dog if one chooses to train with force and pain. In addition, punitive training suffocates the dog’s welfare and potentially leads to side effects like aggression, anxiety and avoidance. It is well documented, and I talked about that in the past.
In laboratory settings and scientific studies, positive reinforcement leads to reliable and self-directed  behavior quickly, but dog owners aren’t scientists or savvy trainers. Dog owners come with diverse levels of experience, skill and know-how, and some are completely new to dogs and reward-based training. Even though neither is very complicated, they make mistakes, like anybody new to anything would. The good news is that with positive reinforcement mistakes won’t have long-lasting or irreparable negative consequences, but it can delay progress and cause enough frustration in the impatient person to give up on the concept altogether.
Here are the most common errors I see people, including some trainers, make.

Your intended reward is the dog’s punishment.
Not only can a pooch feel “Meh” about a reward, but it can be perceived as an aversive, and when that happens you get the exact opposite of what you’re aiming for: when your reward is the dog’s punishment, the behavior you meant to happen again actually decreases. A perfect example is taps on the head or hearty pats along the ribcage. Most dogs don’t like it and shy away.
If your dog avoids or refuses a reward, it isn’t a reward in his mind and won’t reinforce the behavior you are after. Don’t offer it again if he doesn’t want it. And that can include food. Don’t shove a treat into your dog’s mouth if he wants distance to a worrisome trigger, or play ball, or read peemail.
Not long ago I had a cattle dog client who perfectly demonstrated that: he brought the ball right back into the owner’s hand, who promptly gave him a pat on the head, with the result that the dog first snapped at the hand, and then refused to bring the ball all the way in the next time. The dog was labeled aggressive and erratic, when in fact he just acted that way as a result of being “punished” for bringing the ball back. When we “rewarded” him with throwing the ball again without delay, he stopped snapping and eagerly retrieved the toy all the way in.
The reverse also happens in many households: your punishment is the dog’s reward. The best example for that is the inadvertent reinforcement when the jumping dog is pushed off. That is attention, and from the dog’s point of view perhaps even an invitation for a wrestling game, and exactly what he wanted. Jumping is reinforced and therefore will happen again.
So, the take-away message is that a reward is what the dog wants, or it won’t reinforce the behavior you are after. Be creative. You don’t always have to be elaborate, although sometimes your pizzazz can greatly impress your dog, but know what he wants and use it to your advantage.
Right now, on walks, Will wants me to get rid of the pesky deer flies that bury themselves in her coat. I comply and pluck them off, but each time before I do I say “halt”, which in our world means don’t move and wait till I get to you. Her halting on command is powerfully reinforced with me killing the insects, plus we have many naturally occurring opportunities to practice, and because of both I can use the command in situations when it matters to me that Will stops in her tracks.


Your timing is off.
It means that your dog doesn’t form an association between behavior and reward. Especially for fleeting moments, a reward marker, for example a clicker, helps because it bridges action and reinforcement and clarifies to the dog exactly which behavior made the reward happen.
Along that train of thought, holding a grudge, although understandably human, is counterproductive.
If you are still upset about the dug-up flowerbed and gruff when your dog comes straight away when you called him out of the planters, you punish a perfect recall and he might not be so keen to return to you in the future.
It is the last action that counts, and if it is one you like, reinforce it. There is a hitch though: when a bad and a good behavior are lumped together, so when two actions occur very close in time with the first being undesired, but the second reinforced, there is a risk that the dog connects both and will always perform them in sequence. The best example is a dog who lovingly celebrates your homecoming with jumping, but a flash-moment later is sitting – either self-corrected or obeyed your command. Of course you want to reinforce the sit, but not the jump/sit combination. I deal with that by keeping the dog mentally engaged for a few seconds while she is in a sit, followed by asking her to do something else desirable, which I then reinforce. In other words, I give the sit some attention, but then invite the dog into a short, fun, interaction I like and that is rewarding, and/or rewarded. After that I inform the pooch with the “all-done” word and hand signal that I’m about to disengage and that she’s on her own for entertainment for a while.

Your reinforcement schedule is off.
Without getting too technical, reinforcements have to happen in rapid succession, right away, when the dog learns something new.
When the dog gets it, connects the dots between cue and a certain action – a good rule of thumb is the dog complying instantly and correctly 9 out of 10 times when prompted, but also deliberately offering the behavior to elicit a reward - you have two options: If it is the end goal behavior, continue to reinforce randomly, without a fixed pattern. That cements the behavior. An end behavior would be reliably coming when called. It doesn’t get any better than a dog returning to you enthusiastically. You should always acknowledge him for being so accommodating, but you don’t have to toss a handful of treats his way each time.
If it is an approximation, so just a step toward your goal, stop reinforcing altogether and raise the bar by a small increment. For example, if you shape a lie down on a mat, glancing at the mat, or having one paw on it, is not the final behavior, but you must reinforce each step constantly until the dog gets it, and once he does, so once you have the 9 out of 10 times reliability or he seeks out the mat when he is bored and proudly puts one paw on it, stop reinforcing that step and raise the criteria to bring you closer to your end goal, and then you reinforce that constantly until he gets it, and raise the bar again, and so on.

You are not orchestrating enough opportunities for your dog to earn a reward.
In other words, you are not practicing enough. If you can’t find reward-worthy behaviors often, lower your criteria and/or change the situation for the dog so that he can succeed.
The more you do it, the more the action you are training becomes a habit, and then your dog has one more good one up his sleeve. Habit means that the behavior learned with the help of operant conditioning becomes classical conditioned. Steve White, one of my favorite dog gurus, says: “ Anytime you use operant conditioning, Pavlov is sitting on your shoulder. And that is one dude you really want on your team.”

Not managing the dog wisely before a behavior is solid, thus setting him up for failure.
Don’t put your dog’s favorite bed near the picture window when barking at passersby is a problem. Their moving along is reinforcing for your dog and maintains barking at the window. If he has opportunity to do that all day long,  the little bit of “quiet” practice you do when you are home won’t have much of an effect.

Communicating unclearly.
For example using the same command for two behaviors, or not enforcing a command.
In that category also falls making unreasonable requests and raising the bar too quickly – in other words, being impatient and asking for more than the dog can do, but also chaining behaviors together before each one is solidly learned separately. If you work on a position stay, reinforce when the dog is still in position. If you call him out of position and reward him when he comes to you, you are practicing come, not the position stay. I will write more about command clarity sometime in the future, but for now remember that dogs are brilliant, but not mind readers. Say what you mean and reinforce when your dog does what you say. If you can’t enforce what you say, don’t say it.

Taking good behaviors for granted. Dogs offer behaviors we like all the time: don’t ignore, but capture and reinforce them. Don’t ignore the dog calmly chewing a bone on his blanket, and give attention when he steals your leather Italian pump.

If you made mistakes, don’t beat yourself up. The beauty of force and punitive free training is that you can’t really mess things up too badly. Positive reinforcement can be adjusted without creating unwanted and unexpected fallout. But if you can avoid making those common errors in the future, you’ll accelerate your training success and reach your goal faster.
When I see clients, positive reinforcement is a big part of the consultation, and the humans receive all the information they need to do it effectively. Just about everyone I meet gets it. It makes sense to them and is aligned with how they feel: most people don’t want to hurt their dog.  Yet, at times and typically after a prolonged pause, I hear the question: “Yes - but how do I correct my dog when he misbehaves?” Indeed, how do we punish? Or should we?
That, I will sort out for you in the next post. Look for it the end of July.

Positive Reinforcement: The Fasted Route to a Well-Behaved Dog

I am glad that I know a thing or two about dogs for two reasons: I get to work with my favorite species almost daily, and that constant overflow of, often contradictory, information how to successfully live with dogs doesn’t confuse me.
Dog owners must be puzzled these days. Thanks to TV and social media everyone is a dog expert and has an opinion not shy to share with anybody who wants to hear it – or not. As a result, there are many misconceptions circulating, and one is that positive reinforcement doesn’t work, or only with mild dogs.
Positive reinforcement is one of the four quadrants of operant conditioning, and it states that reinforcement creates behavior. In operant conditioning positive is not a judgment label, but simply means that a consequence is added after an action. Law means that it is not an opinion, but a scientifically studied, proven and documented fact. Positive reinforcement is my preferred method to train and treat dogs. Let me explain why.

An organism’s actions are driven by motivation: simplified, to access something that feels good or avoid something that feels bad. The dog is no exception. Newsflash! Dogs function like every other animal, including humans. They want and seek pleasure. It’s a fact, but one that clashes with humans’ infantile belief that a dog’s nature is to love unconditionally regardless how we treat him. Wishful thinking. Relationships between humans are conditional, and dogs behave in the same normal mammalian fashion.
Owners that refuse to facilitate pleasure have to inflict pain to get obedience. It is either-or, and in both cases it has to impress the dog or it won’t work. A lame “good dog” is just as ineffective in increasing a wanted behavior as a limp choke collar correction is in curbing an unwanted one. There is an analogy floating around for a long time that illustrates that brilliantly: The speeding ticket one.

People who exceed the posted speed limit are fined, but we all know that that punishment doesn’t deter folks to drive faster than permitted in the future. They might slow down for the moment, perhaps even for a little while, but the good behavior doesn’t last. Fines only teach people to be vigilantly on the lookout for cops to avoid getting caught again.
If fines don’t work, what might be a more effective solution? Well, we could manufacture cars that won’t drive faster than 100 clicks an hour - the dog equivalent is lifelong micromanaging. That is indeed the method some trainers choose: They advise to snap on a control tool, for example a shock collar, as soon as the dog is released out of his crate, and to take it off as the last thing before he’s put back in. I am not making this up.
How appealing is a preset slow car to you? A dog always controlled unless contained? Personally, I don’t want either, and thankfully, there is another way.
Let’s hypothesize what would happen if, instead of fining speeders, drivers who obey traffic laws received a reward. If cops were to randomly hand over 50-dollar bills, would lead foot ease up on the gas pedal? It depends if he needed the money and why he was driving too fast. A millionaire, or someone who is late for an important job interview, likely wouldn't, but I bet that overall rewarding good drivers instead of punishing bad ones would be more successful. In addition, that approach has two really great side effects: people would seek out law enforcement and not avoid it - that underlying queasy feeling when we see a cop car would disappear, and doing the speed limit would become a self-directed behavior, independent of surveillance. We’d try hard to comply not to miss out on the loot that might be lurking around the corner.

When we punish a dog, we are like the traffic cop. The dog might behave when we’re in the vicinity, for the moment, and only if the punishment we inflict overrides his drive to act. On the other hand, if we reinforce behaviors we like, we build a whole repertoire our dog will offer again, and again…
Are dogs really able to self-direct, to reliably act in ways that we desire but might be against their impulse? I say yes, but believe it is only achievable with positive reinforcement, and it must be applied correctly. There are two key aspects to remember: reinforcement happens after the behavior, and a reward is what matters to your dog - not what you think should be good enough.
The first one is straightforward. Don’t wave your cookie in the air and say come, but call your dog and when he comes the party begins. If the behavior doesn’t happen, neither will the reward. Self-explanatory, I hope, is that during the learning stages the dog must be managed wisely to prevent that he has opportunities to act in ways we don’t want but are externally, or intrinsically, reinforced. In other words, the dog should not be able to misbehave, because if it feels good to him, he’ll misbehave again.
The second point isn’t complicated either if you keep in mind that a reward is only a reinforcement if the behavior you are after happens again. Think back to the 50 bucks for doing the speed limit. That amount of money means nothing to a CEO who is regularly showered with huge perks, so it wouldn’t do much to keep him in line on the road. But it means a lot to someone like me who straddles the middle class, and even more to someone on a low income.
Similarly, the reward you offer your dog must mean something to him, or it will not reinforce the good behavior. When I see an obedient pooch patted on the head combined with verbal “good boy”, I wonder if his person schleps to the office each day for glass marbles and a bear hug from the boss. Even if they love their job and verbal approval, it is generally not enough. The big motivator is hard cash.
For a dog, the big motivator can be food, but isn’t always food. I could hardly impress Will with a milkbone shoved in her mouth when a hare pops out of the bushes in front of her. When she chooses to stay connected with me and ignore the bunny, she is working hard – and I hand out a bonus check. I reinforce with a chase game that might include me, or a special ball, or I might engage her in a seeking game and throw a handful of extra yummy treats for her to nose out.
You have to find your dog’s currency before you can put him on a payroll, and I’ll give you a tip: daily kibble isn’t it for most dogs. Don’t use kibble on the first day of the group obedience class, when distractions are high and your pooch has to work hard. Use chicken or garlic roast beef. People food. Good people food, not hot dogs.

Even though food is practical, think outside the box and be creative. The smarter the dog, the more creative the owner has to be. Be attuned. Attuned is the magic “a” word, not assertive. Understand what your dog wants at the moment, and whatever that is, is the reinforcement that will cause your dog to repeat the behavior that you are teaching. Examples of functional rewards are: riding in the car, a game of fetch or catch-me-if-you-can, distance to a stimulus the dog is fearful of, or the opposite: permission to greet and play.
An interesting walk is high on the wanna-do list for many dogs. Studies with rats showed that when given the choice to navigate through two mazes, with only one resulting in a food reward at the end, they alternated between both. Curiosity and avoiding boredom are powerful motivators for actions, and permission to explore a powerful reward for your dog after he’s paid attention to you, or walked nicely on the leash.
When you join your dog in investigative fun, perhaps even point out where you think interesting scents are, you are creating a deep bond. In the wintertime, we follow animal tracks we spot in the snow, and in the summer we pick berries together on hikes. When you do stuff like that, your dog will want to be with you, and is less and less inclined to seek stimulation away from you, and all training becomes much easier.

Whatever floats my dogs’ boat is what they’ll get when I want to reinforce a behavior I particularly love and want to see again. That makes me mighty powerful in their eyes. My dogs become addicted to me. The skeptics’ warning that reward-based training leads to a dog that behaves for rewards, not the owner, doesn’t hold true if you use positive reinforcement to establish that bond between you.
Yes, ultimately your involvement should matter most to your dog, but you only get that if he experiences that being with you feels better than anything else, and providing material things is a crucial part of it, especially with a new dog and before you meshed together. The dog first has to understand that you own all kinds of amazing assets, then you can put them under your control and make access contingent on behavior. If you orchestrate many opportunities for him to earn feel-good moments, he will try hard to please you. Please you to be released to what pleases him, and hopefully that includes you somehow as well. Trust me, that IS the fasted route to reliable obedience, a well-behaved dog, and a relationship with your canine friend envied by others.
Oh – one more thing: Because every dog wants something, obviously positive reinforcement does work with every dog.

Warning Sounds and Non-Reward Marking

In my last post I discussed reward marking. How telling your dog with sound, word or body that what he does at the moment will be reinforced can expedite training success.

Do we have an opposite to that? An equally helpful… non-reward marker? The good news is that, indeed, we do. The bad news, that it is not as simple as merely vocalizing disapproval with our dog’s action.

Expressing disagreement with someone’s actions is a deep-seated behavior, and the human choice word in English is “no”. I have a T-shirt with a print of a smiling, goofy looking, tongue-lolling-out dog, with its voice bubble saying: “Hi, my name is No-No Bad Dog. What’s yours?” Sadly that comes close to what I hear regularly in my line of work: many “nos” and a lot of very popular “tssts”. Articulations meant to warn the pooch that his behavior will surely be disciplined, corrected, punished – you choose your word cause it is all the same, so he’d better knock it off. NOW.

Even though the “no” and “tsst” are clearly indicating that unruly Rover is certainly NOT getting a reward, they are not considered NRMs, non-reward markers, precisely because the intent is to threaten the dog with a punitive consequence. Unlike NRMs, such warning sounds, other than perhaps giving the owner the illusion that he’s the pack’s leader, are useless. Useless, because typically an action that impresses the dog does not follow the warning, and if there is no consequence the dog doesn't change his behavior, learns to ignore the warning, and eventually will tune you out. The fact that most people “no” or “tsst” all the time, day in and day out, for the same misbehaviors, for the lifetime of the dog, is evidence that they’re ineffectively nagging.

Warnings do work when backed up with something that hurts or frightens the dog in a big way. Then, indeed, a verbal sound or shock collar tone might be all it takes to remind him to toe the line. But aversive consequences intense enough that it stops an unwanted action permanently is abuse, and has fallouts most owners don’t bargain for. The dog avoids the misbehavior, and by extension you and where he lives, or where the punishment took place. Your companionship is in the ditch; your dog resists you, might attack you, or if too intimidated redirect aggression against someone weaker. A dog who fears the power of hands, who feels conflicted and uncertain when his person approaches him, reaches and touches him, or whenever he opens his mouth cause it announces possible imminent pain, will not want to be a human’s faithful friend and working partner, and the owner is missing out on something beautiful he could have had.

The purpose of a NRM is not to warn the dog that something unpleasant will happen, but like the reward marker is meant to strengthen your relationship. It does that by giving the dog clarity with a precise piece of sound information, many trainers like “oops”, that tells him that what he is doing at the moment will not yield a payoff and he’d better think of an alternate behavior to gain access to the resource he is after. So, the fundamental difference between “no” or “tsst” and “oops” is that the end result is not a punishment, but a reward, and with the NRM you’re helping your dog get it.

The Law of Operant Conditioning states that any behavior ignored will become extinct, so couldn’t we just ignore the dog’s unwanted behavior and wait till he comes up with the right one on his own? Patiently let him self-learn what pleases us; what causes us to release the resource he wants and we have control over? We could, and in fact some trainers argue that ignoring is better than non-reward marking, but in my opinion, a clear directional when the dog needs it can decrease frustration and increase attention. To understand when your dog really needs information and then give it, or when self-learning is better, can be a bit tricky and takes practice, but is the fine nuance between good, and fabulous dog training.

Ideally, be attuned to your pooch and apply both, with the caveat not to overuse reward and non-reward marking. Micromanaging can lead to a dog who becomes perpetually dependent on some sort of sound that tells him how to function; he operates purely mechanically and might disconnect from you.

In addition, non-stop noise is annoying. A friend and colleague shared with me a story she heard at a lecture with Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist Kathy Sdao. During a training session with dolphins, in which she used a NRM as information, one of the aquatic mammals became so irritated that he threw the speaker out of the water. He knew exactly where the constant clatter came from, and so does your dog, and you never want to be perceived as an irritant to be avoided or get rid of.

If the dolphin was that frustrated with simply getting information, can you imagine the impact constant warning sounds have on an animal? If you decide to give non-reward marking a go, ensure that you don’t use a word that was a threat in the past your dog has learned to ignore or fear. That word is spoiled and you need a new one. “Ah” works for me, but if you used “ah”, or a sound close in tone as a warning before, try “oops”, or “oh-oh”, or whatever falls naturally on your tongue. It doesn’t matter what you say, important is how your dog perceives it. How he should perceive an NRM is: “Mom says I’m barking up the wrong tree – better do something else to secure the loot.”

Trainer and author Gail Fisher, who calls the NRM Lost Opportunity Marker or LOM, uses a visual signal. She turns her head. Averting the head is also part of a dog’s natural communication and signals that he’d rather not deal with the situation; that he is worried, or not granting audience. Although I really like the subtleness of body language, the head turn obviously only works if the dog is watching you while being baaad. And I see another problem. Because it is dog-speak and expresses avoidance, I wonder how he’d perceive my head turn? Disengagement, displeasure, disinterest in further interactions? If that is the case, the LOM changes from informative to aversive – back to a warning. Even though no real punishment ever follows, but a reward once the dog changes his behavior, a sensitive pooch, for example one who was treated harshly and is shell-shocked, or a very timid one like our Will, could lose the courage to work and connect with that person right away. For that reason, I rather stick to my neutral “ah”, and if I want to add a visual signal I shake my head, cause that is not natural to dogs and my intention can’t be misconstrued.

After you tell your dog with an NRM that he’s strutting the wrong trail, should you use a command that tells him what he should be doing instead?

Gail Fisher gives the dog a second chance right away and cues the desired behavior. She explained that she does so because she aims for immediate command response, but also because she wants to keep the dog in the game; prevent that he gives up if he feels that the window of opportunity to earn the reward closes for good.

For the most part, I like to give my dog some 20-30 seconds to think of a way to get the booty, thereby combining information with self-learning.

You can play around with cuing or waiting, verbal or visual, as long as you remember the two fixed and crucial aspects: the information you give your dog should never be threatening but assisting, and your dog’s next best behavior has to be reinforced, rewarded, and ideally with what he wants at the moment. Then the NRM becomes one more tool that helps make you and your dog an awesome team.