Rewarding Rant

[huski]

I don't think there's anything wrong with being "generous" if it's done at the right time! I think it is easier for people rewarding with a tug as its more physical than food, but it definitely seems to be a challenge for some people to let loose and really play with their dogs and enjoy it.

[Sayreovi]

That would really shit me at flyball comps, people would run their dogs and just grab them when they got back no praise, treat or reward of any sort :/. Is it really that hard to interact for just a moment.

Agree with this, I find it always leads to problems in time. I know one person who is really proud that they don't 'have' to reward their dog at flyball

Yup and I see it in agility as well, people get to the end and just walk out without appearing happy or praising their dog. I just don't get that, my dogs are always so happy when they finish either a flyball or agility run, they try their heart out for me the least I can do is give them a reward they deserve.

With my dogs/breed if you don't reward them they will think they did it wrong and slowly shut down......or in my old boys case give me the finger and wander off LOL So I don't have the 'luxury' of ever not rewarding, luckily I can also reward my youngest with a stick/twig to rip up...or a leaf...or a bit of grass :p

I would love to know what I do now what I did when my first two were young, I have a brilliant little girl at the moment who I can reward with anything as I worked on that when she was young. Makes it much easier to switch it up and keep her guessing on what she will get this time, and all rewards have similar value.

Edited June 24, 2013 by tollersowned

[Cosmolo]

Totally agree with Vickie and Huski. Frustrating

[OSoSwift]

Yep frustrating.

Or the "well of course even my dog would do that if I bribed it or shoved food at it all the time" :banghead:

Yep the food does it there is no skill or training involved at all!!!!!!!

[corvus]

I get sick of people deciding what their dog is motivated by. TSD just demonstrated the benefits of working on building multiple reinforcers. Sometimes dogs just don't know that something is rewarding because they haven't that much experience with it being rewarding.

[Wobbly]

yeah I remember teaching Jarrah tug - she had no clue what it was about at first, and no interest whatsoever. Early on in the piece, I concluded she had no prey drive since she wouldn't tug (I am derp). She totally did, I just had to learn to harness it with her, and show her it was fun. What's rewarding is so individual for a dog, I am just learning it now. I still like to offer her choices to see what she goes for, devon or cheese, french linen tug or leather tug, and she may choose differently under different circumstances too. I am still trying to establish an order of how different reinforcements relate to different environments and different distractions too - eg balls in the house are of no interest (too many lying around the house for too many years, so too ho hum to reliably get her to chase inside), but though a thrown ball in the house is of no interest, a thrown ball out of the house is better than kibble or rolling in duck poo (for example).

It's actually quite amazing to me I can have owned her for over 5 years now without actually having a really firm grasp on her individual order of preference for rewards in different environments. You can't decide this, you can condition stuff ofc, but ultimately an individual dog likes what it likes.

[sheena]

My young guy just loves to tug & will tug anywhere. He loves it so much that we have now steered away from using it as a reward for a lot of things in training as it just gets him too excited to concentrate on the task at hand, so it's mainly food rewards which he also loves but it doesn't get as excited. My girl just loves to tug but only in the loungeroom & is totally not interested in it in any other environment (I have tried, believe me), but bring out the treats & a clicker & she is all mine :) So for her, the best reward is the sight of the clicker.

[The Spotted Devil]

Only tugging at home is not unusual at all...I think it takes a lot of focus to "tug in public" so not the easiest for some dogs. Zig definitely went through this but I gradually built it up because I'm extremely stubborn :laugh: Em is now in the same place and I will take her down the same path albeit a little more slowly as retrieving is her main game.

[Wobbly]

On the other end of the spectrum, there is also the issue of compulsive drive. Which I only get outside the house (in specific locations where I have conditioned it - yer I didn't understand the generalising locations concept for years, so I kind of messed that one up). I have done this with my dog in regards to swim/fetch/tug game. I have conditioned this game in so heavily over so many years she is compelled to "play". She has no choice in it, from her perspective she MUST play it if I'm offering it. It has been handy of course in the past, if there's other dogs around, running, playing, piquing her chase instinct then it's easy to get her focus off them, nothing at all can distract her from swim/fetch/tug. Useful as it's been when i didn't understand anything apart from compulsive training (most of her life) I have been avoiding it since I learnt about it (only a couple of weeks ago or less even), because I am all about offering her choice right now (and setting it up so she chooses what I want ofc).

[Wobbly]

Getting a collar and leash on is a pretty good in house reward here. The power of premack - collar rules because collar = walk. I bet I can do that with the clicker too - clicker = pure awesome rewards! But first I need the chicken camp to sort out my ignorance about clicker training. XD

[Wobbly]

Just to continue my turbo posting, what I forgot to mention there - is that when it's compulsive like that, it's hardly a reward.

[corvus]

Compulsive drive? I get what you're trying to say about conditioning a dog to perform particular behaviours in particular contexts/in response to particular signals, but I'm not sure how this can be considered unrewarding if it's something they like to do?

[Vickie]

I don't think Wobbly said its "un"rewarding...maybe just not a useful reward in a training context.

One of my dogs LOVES to jump/launch into the dam. She is compulsive about it! No toy required, she just loves to jump in on command.I guess I could use it as a reward for agility since she obviously finds it highly rewarding...but it's not a particularly useful reward in a training context...and since she's highly driven by other rewards that involve interacting with me, it really wouldn't occur to me to use it.

Edited June 25, 2013 by Vickie

[Wobbly]

I will find out more, it's something Denise Fenzi has told me in the online course when I explained Jarrah is completely undistractable, there's nothing on the planet that could break her focus on this game. As I understand it, it's still a rewarding behaviour in the sense she loves it, but though she is enjoying herself immensely, it's uncontrolled overarousal. Her brain is completely stalled in this state. In McDevitt terms I think something like Snap when he was running round like a lunatic in overarousal, no control. I never stopped to really ponder about what was going here on because it was so handy in respect to keeping her focussed on the game in the face of massive distractions, but it's undesireable to me now since she is too far gone to make a choice, so still rewarding for her I guess, but no longer useful to me as a method of reinforcement since I want her feeling as though she has made a choice.

As Denise explained, she is incapable of realising she has choice in that context. So she is forced to ignore say the running dogs in order to concentrate on the game, but since the decision to ignore the running dogs is made by force (she feels she has no choice) she is still in conflict about that. She might really want to go and check out the running dogs, but feels she can't abandon her game. Where what i want is for her to know absolutely that she has made a clear choice to not investigate the running dogs, so I can condition that in to be automatic. She's still interested in running dogs, since she has only ever been compelled to ignore them in this way or with leash restraint.

I hope I have understood right and am passing on correct info, I think so. Sorry if my explanation is a bit wiggy, I am still processing so it's still shaky in my mind.

Edited June 25, 2013 by Wobbly

[corvus]

Oh, I see. Erik is like that chasing other dogs playing fetch. He loves to do it so much he can tell when a dog is barely entertaining the thought of looking for a toy to play fetch with. Completely useless for training, though, and he can't learn much in that state even if I could use it as a reward. At the moment we do a vague kind of pattern game that is kind of like GMAB (but probably doesn't qualify) with some dogs that love fetch that we know don't get too pissy with him. LAT if it's dogs we don't know.

I am assuming it's highly reinforcing. It's clearly extremely difficult for him to resist the urge to get all cattle herdy about it, but I don't know if that's because it's highly reinforcing or because it pushes all his magic buttons and he has no choice. If someone says "You can do this massively reinforcing thing if you want, or you can do something else." and someone else says "You must do this massively reinforcing thing." I don't know that I'd be able to tell which one he was responding to by the outcome alone.

[Weasels]

A related vent: trainers and clubs who just flat out lie about how they use reinforcement.

e.g.

- "we use a variety of rewards based on the individual dog" followed up by "we never use food and teach dogs to work out of respect".

- "we use reinforcers to teach and then correct once the dog has learnt the behaviour" but in reality are commanding people to use physical correction on dogs and puppies in the first class.

- or conversely "no physical punishment is allowed in class" followed by "but check chains are mandatory and food is forbidden".

Just man up and be honest people.

Edited June 25, 2013 by TheLBD

[Wobbly]

Oh, I see. Erik is like that chasing other dogs playing fetch. He loves to do it so much he can tell when a dog is barely entertaining the thought of looking for a toy to play fetch with. Completely useless for training, though, and he can't learn much in that state even if I could use it as a reward. At the moment we do a vague kind of pattern game that is kind of like GMAB (but probably doesn't qualify) with some dogs that love fetch that we know don't get too pissy with him. LAT if it's dogs we don't know.

I am assuming it's highly reinforcing. It's clearly extremely difficult for him to resist the urge to get all cattle herdy about it, but I don't know if that's because it's highly reinforcing or because it pushes all his magic buttons and he has no choice. If someone says "You can do this massively reinforcing thing if you want, or you can do something else." and someone else says "You must do this massively reinforcing thing." I don't know that I'd be able to tell which one he was responding to by the outcome alone.

Yeah, at this point I don't feel I have enough understanding to really explain it clearly yet, I have a pastiche of different understandings of behaviour that I struggle to fit together in a cohesive way. Chicken camp's emphasis on Learning Theory will help a lot I feel. But basically, when I got Jarrah, playing with other dogs was her highest value reinforcement, unfortunately she also displayed a very strong tendency to exhibit what I now believe to be "predatory drift" toward other dogs when over excited, Steve K9pro suggested her behaviour there was prey related, although he could not absolutely confirm since he never saw directly. Over time I have had a lot of success with a counter conditioning, desensitisation program based on premack principles (yes, you can say hello to the other doggy if you are calm and polite) that Steve gave me back when I first got Jarrah. That has worked wonders, and given me some really valuable insights and I've managed to effect his program really well in respect to other leashed dogs, but a leashed dog is a completely different trigger to a running dog. The Swim/Fetch/Tug gave me an easy way to control her that didn't involve severe correction, but I misapplied and patterned it in too hard i think, the lack of an out exacerbated this a lot. It was the right thing to do for me at the time, given the limits of my understanding then, but I think now I have a good out, which gives her so much more focus, and have developed a deeper (if far from complete) understanding, I can do better here. I haven't started to apply it yet, since I know my incomplete understanding could lead to further mistakes, which I don't want to make and the status quo is really quite effective atm, if not the ideal I am aiming for.

I hope that makes sense, I know my explanations are convoluted, that's due to the fact my understanding is so incomplete, I need a lot more study time as yet before I can feel really confident about what I think here.

Sorry for the OT. But maybe it's the right thread, I am one owner trainers may want to have a rant about - Steve is probably thinking "But I explained this for you! How can you not understand it!". :laugh: But I just take more time to understanding some stuff that others might be able to grasp quickly. XD

ETA: I think my problem is that I had so many problems to start with, and so little knowledge, I really did get a dog who is "too much dog" for my experience level. So when I saw Steve it was remedial catchup time, I never got to ask him about this more advanced stuff, because he was pretty flat out just trying to give me enough knowledge to control the more basic issues I was having. Now he's given me that understanding, my situation is really pretty good, as a pure pet owner, I reached a good spot. But I want more! I want to actually gain the understanding that people like Steve and Denise Fenzi and others have. It's good to have a goal, although I don't think I will get to those heights since that requires years and years and years of study with many different dogs.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Wobbly

[Mrs Rusty Bucket]

ooh dog training rants...

my sin = CRAP - continuously rewarding ambiguous performance. There are times when my dog uses me like one of those pigeons pecking the bar for a treat - she pokes my hand and I deliver without even thinking about it (eek).

But if I can make her work harder - she performs better and stays interested longer - which does my head in. I'm trying to change from the vending machine treat dispenser to the pokie machine payout on good and great performance only.

So rant from yesterday - lady standing with cute fluff ball of a dog that was really excited to be there and was bouncing around like a yoyo on a string lead. Owner punished dog over and over for jumping and getting to the end of the lead trying to be friendly and say hello to everybody and when it settled and sat nicely next to her - she did NOTHING...

I said "look your dog is doing what you want - quick - give her a pat now"...

which set the dog off again... but we waited and it calmed down and stopped jumping on me and I give it a big greeting pat, and suggested the handler might "look for opportunities to reward".

Doesn't have to be a treat, but FFS praise and pat when your dog get it right - don't ignore it.

[corvus]

Wobbly, FWIW I think you're something kinda special. Not only are you capable of some startling insights, but you seem to have a good sense of what you know and what you don't know. The latter is a pretty big deal. If there is one thing I've learnt from my PhD (and there's not, there are a zillion), it's that the more you learn the less you realise you know. You have an inquiring mind and seem to be able to take in apparently conflicting methodologies and understand that they are not conflicting at all. Good for you. I hope you continue on your investigative journey, and realise there is no endpoint. :) Just more and more knowledge and experience.

If we have time at chicken camp I'll show you my response landscapes. They are supposed to make it easier for people to see how arousal and emotional states interact and influence training outcomes. Supposedly it hints at when you should be lowering arousal and when you should be counter-conditioning and so forth. They are online, but the paper is heavy going. The curse of academia. A lovely lady at Horses and People 'translated' it into a nice article. Complete with terribly awkward quotes from me. http://www.horsesandpeople.com.au/article/your-horse-the-mood-learn I did a dog one for Click! magazine, but I think you have to be an APDT member to get that.

But basically, when I got Jarrah, playing with other dogs was her highest value reinforcement, unfortunately she also displayed a very strong tendency to exhibit what I now believe to be "predatory drift" toward other dogs when over excited, Steve K9pro suggested her behaviour there was prey related, although he could not absolutely confirm since he never saw directly.

She's a staffy mix, right? They have some odd responses to arousal around other dogs IME. Usually when dogs get highly aroused they are likely to default to what they were bred to do.

[Jigsaw]

I hear you Vickie!! It is very hard to get people to understand the concept of high rate of reinforcement. I want people to engage with their dog while they give the reward, get that tail wagging!!

Chicken Camp will definitely help you out with theory and practical there Wobbly!! Terry Ryan is probably the best speaker I've seen, she has a lovely way about her and finds something positive to say about everyone, even if they are struggling to do things right. It was a very insightful seminar on dealing with people too from my point of view!