반려견의 학습 속도를 높여주는 5가지 간단한 팁 (강화 프로세스) #31

we want to transfer that 10 and get a value of 10 at the end of the behavior that we're training. Regardless if it is sit down, chase a toy, keep your feet off my guests, don't beg at the table, don't bark when you're alone. Whatever the behavior is, we want the transfer. We don't want to lose the value by when we're training. That transfer of value. Our training is most efficient and effective if we can hold that 10 value for the roast beef all the way through. That's the difference between a professional like me, somebody who has excelled at the highest level of dog sport and had success because my transfer of value is more effective and efficient. I'm going to help you get yours there right now. There's four things. First of all, I'm going to share with you. My mentor, Bob Bailey, he has this great mantra and it is that reinforcement is a process. It's not an event. Meaning when your dog sits and you say, good boy, here's a cookie. The reinforcement isn't the cookie getting to the dog's mouth. There is a reinforcement process. And if you understand it and you start respecting it, that process is how we get the transfer of value from the roast beef of 10 to stay and not lose any value, not go down on the way to getting into the behavior. Why do we want to keep it that way? Because if your dog loves roast beef and we can transfer that love for roast beef into something like lying down when I say, your dog's going to lie down fast and they're going to lie down excited. They're going to do it every single time. That's how you know you've got a great transfer of value. And so, let's look at training itself. First, we're just evaluating the responses that our dogs get, our dogs offering, our dogs are doing. And then we see the one we like. Let's pick the down since we were talking about that. You have to know what is the criteria of a down. What makes it a down? Is it when the dogs, you can say, well, the dog's no longer in a stand or a sit. All right. So, their stomach's on the ground, but their elbows are off because they're excited. Is that a down? Let me think about that. You shouldn't have to think about it. You know your criteria because you can't train it if you don't know it. Know what your criteria is before you get into that. Now your training is evaluating what your dog is doing until you see what it is that you want to reward. Now let's say your dog understands a down and you want to reward, you know, faster downs or whatever. The first part is that you are able to look at all the responses and see the one you like.

So, that's step number one in the reinforcement process. Remember? Reinforcement is a process, not an event. The first is picking out what you like. The next is marking it. Now you don't always mark all behaviors, but let's assume most of them you do. It could be marking with a clicker. I like it. It could be marking with a word. Good. Could be marking with a different word like, yes. I mean, the shorter the word, the better. That's part of the reinforcement process. All right. So, we've, first step is acknowledging or recognizing what you like. Boom. Second is marking. And there's a gap between seeing what you like, picking out what you like, and then marking it. That's part of the reinforcement process. The third is delivering the reward. That's part of the reinforcement process. The gap between you marking what you like and you delivering the reward. And the final thing is the placement of the reward. And I shouldn't say the final thing. There is one other thing, and that is the release from the behavior, giving the dog permission to move on. So, let's say there's five things. All right. Seeing what you like. Step number one, know your criteria and then evaluate it. And the gap between seeing what you like and acknowledging it, and you need to be non-emotional. All right. Because remember podcast episode number 16, the thing before the thing. Well, the reinforcement process, the dog picks up the thing before the thing very quickly. So, if you are training and you're like all intense and your head's all cocked to the side, and then when the dog's starting to get it, you start moving because you're going to move towards your cookie. The dog recognizes you went from intense to moving towards reinforcement and they will stop the behavior or they will cut it short. There is an old turn of the century behavior study with a horse called Clever Hans. And it was in Germany, this fellow could give the horse any kind of math problem, division, arithmetic, multiplication or addition or subtraction, anything, all kinds of math problems. I think there was actually even word problems. And the horse like over 80% of the time got it right. I think it was 87% of the time got it right. And so, that was astonishing to these behaviorists. Other people like could ask the question, not only the fellow who owned the horse, other people could ask the question, the horse got it right. What they, long story short, they found was the horse picked up tells, like poker tells, right? So, my hallucination is at first Hans's owner

might've been looking at his feet really intently. And when the horse got it right, he put his head up and then the horse knew, oh, I'll get a reward because his head's moving. And that's the first thing he does before he rewards me. Eventually the horse was just looking at people's eyes. So, he would just keep pawing the ground. Like what's five plus five? He'd start pawing the ground. And when he'd see that people were starting to lift their head, he'd slow the pawing the ground down. And then when they turned their head a certain way, he stopped pawing the ground. That is the thing before the thing. That is going to influence your training and it's going to make it less efficient. So, when you are evaluating step one, when you're evaluating the criteria you're seeing, you need to be unemotional and not be moving until you've marked it. Now the gap between seeing it and marking it is important because let's say your dog is doing something and you go, oh, that, that was good. I think that's the one I like. Yeah. I got to get my clicker and then I'm going to, I'm going to click, oh, the clicker's upside down. I'm going to turn it up right side up and then I'm going to click it. Well, that gap, what you're rewarding now is not the behavior. You're rewarding the duration. So, let's assume the dog went into a down and stayed into a down. You are now marking the stay of the down, not the actual, oh good, your elbows hit the ground. I like that. Or what might else have happened, your dog might've gone into a down and while you were fumbling with your clicker, he might've got up out of the down and then gone into a sit. And then you click the wrong thing, making your training inefficient. So, step number one, going through and unemotionally picking out what you want. Step number two, marking it. Step number three is the delivery of the reinforcement. So, you've marked it. Good. I like that. And then you go into your pocket and you pick out a cookie and then it's like, oh, that one's too big. Okay. I'll break that one in half. And then I'll put these ones back in my pocket and then I'm going to give you the cookie, but maybe I got a couple other in my hand and I'm going to pull that away. So, that delivery was crap, right? The time it took to reach into your pocket and to sift through what you have and to break them up because they were too big. So, that took time away from the gap. Remember you're getting very inefficient. And then you deliver the cookie with other cookies in the small of your hand, in the pocket of your hand. So, the dog gets one and sees 10 going away.

Wait a minute. I can do math. That sucked for me. So, when you're delivering the reward, deliver it fast and efficient. One cookie goes in and you give the one cookie because a lot of dogs are going to see the value being taken away. And that little one you give may become more of a punishment than a reward because of, Hey, what about the other ones? It could cause some angst in your training. Now some dogs will learn to live with it, but I know training terriers, they are not happy when you take away the value. So, the delivery is important. Have your reinforcement ready. Maybe have it in your hand or have it in a, I always have one cookie in my hand when I'm training. So, I could be boom, boom, boom, boom. You want to cut down those gaps. See what you want, mark it, deliver it. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Super quick. A little more boom, boom. Get a little more boom, boom into your dog training. Oh, it should be the name of this episode maybe. I digress. The fourth element is the placement. Well, Susan, you just said the delivery. Isn't that the same thing? Oh, nay, nay. The placement is secret sauce, guys. It's secret sauce. So, let's say you want your dog to go into a down. You mark it, you say good, you go to deliver it really quickly. And as you deliver it, your dog kind of comes up to reach you. I'm just going to meet you. So, I'm going to help facilitate you giving me that cookie by meeting you part way. And then they take the cookie and they go right back into the down. You actually have rewarded them for breaking criteria. So, the placement of the reinforcement needs to contribute to your goal, whatever your goal is. So, for you obedience people out there, a lot of people in obedience, we have a retrieve and the dog has to retrieve something very specific. It's like a piece of wood or plastic dowel with bells on the end. It's called a dumbbell. And so, the dog retrieves it, they get rewarded when it comes out of their mouth. So, a lot of dogs don't want to hold it. Now, when I train my dogs to do this, I actually deliver the cookies to them while they're holding it. They actually get cookies in their mouth and then I take it out. That's a process all on its own, not really in the scope of this podcast. But my point is the placement of the reinforcement, does it contribute to your ultimate goal? My ultimate goal is to have my dog hold the dumbbell. I will reward him with his mouth still holding the dumbbell. When you're training in dog agility, you want your dog to stay on the seesaw. Are you rewarding the dog when they are on the seesaw? Or

are you saying, oh, good boy. And he walks towards you and gets his cookie walking towards you. Does the placement of the reinforcement contribute to your ultimate goal? Super important. The other part of placement of reinforcement, number one, does it contribute to your goal? Number two, is it the same proximity to you? So, for example, you want your dog to just hang out in his bed while you eat dinner so he's not begging at the table. And every now and again, you get up and you feed him in his bed. And you keep doing that day after day. And you believe the dog's learning to stay in his bed. Here's the thing about behavior. Only the dog really knows for sure what we're training. We may think we know what we're training, but we don't know. The dog always has the last word. So, maybe in the dog's mind, it's all about staying close to you to get cookies. And if the table gets too far away, the dog's going to start moving closer. What could you do? If, for example, I wanted to teach my dog to run in a straight line away from me, I wouldn't call him back to me to reward him. I'd either use a remote feeder out there, or I would throw a toy to reward him for running out in a straight line. The placement of the reinforcement is important and the proximity to you. What does that look like? If you want a dog to learn to not bark when you leave the room, then you can't keep going back to the room to feed them. Either have somebody else go back to the room to feed them or invest in a remote feeder. All right. So, you've got to know those things. Be able to see what you want to evaluate quickly, make the decision. And the moment you see what you want and you've made that decision, you've got to be able to get in there and reinforce or mark the behavior, if that's what you're doing. Mark the behavior and then deliver the reinforcement fast and effectively. And when you deliver the reinforcement, then consider what is the placement of the reinforcement and how does that contribute to my end goal and the end proximity away from me. And finally, you're going to give your release while the dog is still holding the position you rewarded. That is like supercharging the supercharge. Remember, I talked about the power of permissions here right on Shaped by Dog. In that episode, I said our words, our releases are as reinforcing into some dogs, more reinforcing than the cookies we are using in our dog training. And so, the final piece to this transfer of value in maintaining that high value of your food or your

toys, if you're using toys, maintaining that value, the final piece is making sure that the dog is maintaining the criteria you've established when you deliver the release word. And of course, you are always, always giving a release word. So, you're not going to tell your dog down and then go to work because then you're going to confuse your dog. Always. If we give our dogs a positional cue, sit down, stand, or in agility doing a target and stopping at the bottom of something or waiting at a start line, whatever we do, anything that requires a dog to hold a control position must always be followed up with a release word. And in what I'm suggesting is make sure the dog is maintaining criteria before you give that release word. So, if you want your dog to sit and he starts leaning forward and it turns into like his butt just starts lifting off the ground a little bit and a little bit and a little bit, you actually, when you, if you gave a release word when the dog was doing that, you would be releasing them for what? That's right. I heard you say that while you're driving in your car. You would be releasing the dog for breaking your criteria of keeping your butt on the ground. Now, I hope this wasn't too overwhelming for those of you who are just getting ready to get a new dog. It's super easy to be as successful in these foundational behaviors as any one of us professional dog trainers. All that you need to do is recognize the value of the food or the toy that you're using. And are you maintaining that value and ideally supercharging your training by being mindful of those five points? See what you're going to reward, mark it, deliver it, placement of reinforcement, and give a release. Hey, if you're finding value in this podcast, would you do me a favor? Would you share it with one other dog loving person or maybe more? Share it on your social media pages? I would forever be indebted to you because my goal is to help dog owners worldwide better understand their dogs and to help dogs worldwide to have the best life possible. And I thank you in advance for contributing to that goal. I'll see you next time on Shaped by Dog.