What is positive reinforcement training?
If you are an Oprah fan, you may have recently seen Tamar Geller, Oprah’s personal dog coach, demonstrating her positive training approach with Oprah’s dogs. It’s easy to see that her techniques worked extremely well! What’s more, Oprah’s dogs very obviously enjoyed the training experience and were more than happy to participate. Positive reinforcement places its emphasis on rewarding desirable behavior. This concept is based on the principles of operant conditioning, in which behavior is determined by its consequence. In short, this is motivational training in a positive sense. Motivation is used to encourage desirable behaviors, and unwanted or undesirable behaviors are either redirected into acceptable behaviors or ignored. With repetition, reinforced behaviors win out, and unrewarded behaviors are extinguished. In other words, behavior causes something to happen. (Ex: your dog whines at the door and you go over, open the door, and let him out). Your dog is acting on the environment
Positive Reinforcement Training works on the scientific principles of operant conditioning, and is a highly effective way to train your dog and improve your bond. Basically, using positive reinforcement means that you reward your dog for the behaviours that you want repeated; by helping your dog understand the connection between visual/audio cues and a reward, you will find that he responds to you quickly and consistently regardless of what is happening. But using positive reinforcement doesn’t mean that you will always have to “bribe” your dog with a cookie or treat to get them to do something. First of all, a reward doesn’t have to be food; toys and petting also work. Furthermore, once your dog gets a behaviour down, you slowly fade the treat away. Thus the reward is a tool that helps to shape the behaviours you want from your dog, not a bribe. Think of it more as a paycheck that your dog has earned after he has completed his “job”- whether it be sitting nicely when guests come over,
Positive reinforcement means rewarding our pets for performing the behaviors we want. The reward is determined by the individual animal. Many animals work well for food, but others enjoy working for toys/games or the opportunity to do something they enjoy. Studies and practical experience prove that rewarding an animal when it performs the desired behavior increases the likelihood that the behavior will be performed again and again. (This is known as Thorndike’s Law of Effect.
One of the most common misconceptions about positive training is that all we do is throw cookies around and hope for the behavior to miraculously happen! This couldn’t be farther from the truth. What I am actually doing is manipulating the consequences for the animal to get the kinds of behaviors I want. My training applies the same kinds of positive motivation techniques on dogs that are used for training dolphins, sea lions, sea otters and killer whales. As you can imagine, try physical or verbal compulsion on a killer whale (“No, no! Bad whale!”) and you just might end up as lunch! Behavior is reward driven. Dogs do what works. If lying on their backs, sneezing and wagging their tails while in the bathtub got them reinforced, they would do it! Positive training can be utilized to overcome many fears or aggression and to help your dog reach his full potential. I stress building a positive reinforcement history with your dog, proper management skills (if your dog gets into the garbage
