Food Rewards

[Denis Carthy]

Lab Poodle

I was putting it into personal context. I should have said "I won't have a breakdown if my dog drops a dumbell.

Denis

I was not thinking of you or for that matter the excercise - I thought the behaviours involved were ideal examples of how to illustrate the operant 'reward' - 'punishment' meanings.

Summed up, Lablove, ALL behaviour, every milli second of it, of any animal, is split into one of two things - reward or punishment. Which one of the two is determined by the outcome/consequence of ANY behaviour.

Taking that back to a dog running off into the environment instead of recalling for a treat:

- coming back for a treat 'on recall' would be a 'punishment' to any dog which refuses recall, the reward behaviour 'to the dog' is to ignore the owners command and enjoy 'the consequences' of ignoring behaviour (running free - doing its own thing ), the consequences of ignoring leads to reward, (chasing, sniffing around etc,) and it is the 'do your own thing' reward which is a positive reinforcer for the dog to ignore commands.

Put another way, which we all understand, without useing these grossly misused terms, the dog is being trained to ignore comands as it wants when it wants unless it experiences a positive punishment as the consequence of ignoring a command (reduces ignoring behaviours).

Edited June 7, 2006 by Denis Carthy

[Lablover]

(I must get my dog to do the retrieve at any cost, I must , i must ,I must) It describes them very well, but hasn't really come up with a solution.

Huh? I have the view that a good dog wants to inherently retrieve just as much as the trainer. Luckily labradors not suitable for high level competition are usually well trained and are accepted in pet homes/schools with open arms.

All the same interesting subject. The bottom line is to watch our dogs carefully at every opportunity, they can teach us a lot and improve our training and ideas. I try to think like a dog.

[lab and poodle]

All that I wanted to say is that with all this theory, and our trialling we can loose the plot. The aim is to have fun and teach our dogs.My dog is not a pretty lab but comes from a long line of high performing pommy and kiwi labs too. He has never in competition dropped a dumbell or a seekback article or a scent article. But if he did, I wouldn't sweat about it.

He has a high prey drive, so for him as Denis said , retrieving is rewarding. Again as Denis said, if he were carrying the Dumb Bell and along came a nice cat to chase (as an example) , carrying the dumbell would be a punishment becuase he would sooner chase the cat.(rewarding).

If a dog had a low prey drive, the whole process of carrying the dumbell could be punishing.

What some trainers aim to do is establish behaviours as reflexes. The idea here is by repetition and or speed get the behaviour (chain) such that no thought is required by the animal. An example is by using a high number of repititions and shaping for speed, the dog won't get distracted and will operate on reflex only. In human terms this would be a little like an OCD. Here Cognitive and Operant theories are identical.

I was being obtuse and funny about the compulsive need to get our dogs to do a particular behaviour. (Not that I have ever done that...).

Denis does make a valid point about the relativity fo reward and punishment. One could debate the semantics for a while.

I think it is important to understand the basics of this theory, and the semantics are interesting. I am very interested into applying this into feedback theory (not really pysc) . Here we do an "experiment", and observe the outcome. Our next "experiment" is based on this outcome. Several possible outcomes are possible. I see a positive feedback situation (makes the behaviour increase) when my pup jumps up to appease my older dog,(an "experiment") and he barks to tell her to go away and she repeats the appeasement . Negative feedback dampens behaviour down.This can be used and fairly describes dog training sometimes.

[Lablover]

We had a friend over last night who is a highly respected musician. Self taught. I suppose, like dog training, it is an art/gift not a science.

The proof is in the pudding.

[lab and poodle]

I entirely agree.