This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.

Dunbar promotes lure-reward training.  This training uses a lure in order to accomplish a behaviour, and a reward to communicate the desirability of the behaviour lured.

 

 

The Steps of Lure Reward Training

Any behaviour we can teach on cue by a 1234 process in lure/reward training. The 1234 steps are:

1: Request (i.e. use the cue – e.g. say “sit”)

2: Lure (i.e. get the behaviour – e.g. use food to get the dog’s nose up and bum down)

3: Response (the dog performs the behaviour)

4: Reward the dog

 

1,3,4 is always clear, but the lure to get a behaviour (2) may need some creativity.

 

There may also be several lures for one behaviour.  If this is the case, they should be ranked from most desirable to least.  For example, if you were training a dog to eliminate on cue, you could ‘lure’ the behaviour by confinement (i.e. putting the dog in a crate for a period of time) or by an olfactory lure (pee smell).  It’s probably easier to crate your dog than to carry pee in a bottle, but it’s up to you to determine the best lure for you and your dog.

 

Once you’ve got the behaviour, you can start to progress through the stages of luring.  Lures should be phased within a few repetitions, and rewards should become ‘life rewards’ instead of extrinsic rewards in a brief period of time.

 

The stages of reward training is phasing out, first, the lure and, second, the reward, and then enforcing compliance (without pain).

 

 

Stage One – Phase Out the Lure

This is a teaching phase.  We are teaching the dog a cue (e.g. “sit” or “drop” or “pee”) in this stage, and explaining to him what our words mean by using a lure.  The lure is increasing the likelihood of a behaviour occurring, so that that behaviour can be rewarded.  The lure is used a few times to get the behaviour, to start a reward history.  Once this has been achieved, it is then time to getting rid of the lure.

 

Normally, when you are using a food lure, there is a natural hand cue that goes along with it.  You can phase out the food lure to ‘invisible food’, and start to use a hand lure/signal.  (Of course, the food is still given as a reward, but the food is no longer acting as a lure.)

 

For a puppy, within 4 trials, you should be able to get 7 behaviours with one treat.  (Dunbar suggests “sit”, “down”, “sit”, “stand”, “down”, “stand” as it practices all position changes.)

 

From here, you can start the process of fading the physical hand signal.  To this requires precise timing:  A verbal cue should occur before the hand signal (and any other signal!).  This is a form of ‘good anticipation’ – using anticipation to our advantage.

 

 

Stage Two – Phase Out the Reward

This is “90%” (according to Dunbar) of dog training – phasing out the food reward and motivating the dog to give his best response.  He suggested beginning differential reinforcement (only rewarding the best responses), and moving onto life rewards that are better than food (like fetch and tug, or playing with other dogs, going for a walk, sniffing).  He also suggested putting the 8 behaviour problems on cue and using them as a reward (more on this later).

 

Dogs that really enjoying playing with other dogs and going for walks can benefit from these being used as rewards… If they’re not being used as rewards then they can serve as a big distraction later!  You can intersperse behaviour requests throughout a walk, and then continued walking is the reward.

 

Dogs will begin to blow off lures over time, and then owners often try to increase the type of lure (i.e. the value of the food).  This is what happens if you don’t phase the lure, and don’t use excellent life rewards.

 

 

 

Stage Three – Enforce the Response (without pain)

The third stage in lure reward training is enforcing the dog’s compliance.  This can be achieved through verbal punishments and specific redirection, and also the DogCon3 method.

 

The DogCon3 method is the idea that dogs can learn different names mean different levels of compliance.  For example, Ian suggests a casual name as DogCon1 (e.g. “Max”), a more formal name as DogCon2 (e.g. “Maxwell”), and perhaps a maximum formality name meaning competition style as DogCon3 (e.g. “Mister Maxwell”).  If you use the DogCon1 name, you are ‘suggesting’ the dog follow your cue, while if you use the DogCon2 name you will ‘insist’ the dog performs the behaviour.  The DogCon3 name conveys to the dog that you are after precision and pizazz in their compliance.

 

The idea in using DogCon3 is that you, inevitably, give more than one command often.  The DogCon3 system means that your dog will be able to understand when you’re merely ‘chatting’ and when you ‘mean it’.

 

For a dog that does not follow a cue preceded by their DogCon2 name, then punishment and repetitive instruction is needed.

 

What’s to like about lure reward training?

Luring makes behaviours predictable, so the word cue can be paired with the behaviour from the first trial. This means the dog learns the cue quickly.

Because luring gets the behaviour from the first trial, differential reinforcement can be used there on.

Lure reward training is quick, you say “sit”, you lure the sit, and then you’re done!  Because it’s quick, it inspires trainers (especially new dog owners) to keep going, and it’s easy to then implement differential reinforcement to improve the quality of response.

You can work on a number of different lured behaviours at once.

When you want to fade the lure, Dunbar believes it’s easier to fade than other training aids (specifically physical prompts and clickers). [Personal comment: I would debate that… I don’t find clickers hard to fade, but I find luring hand motions hard to fade… But, clickers take longer to get a behaviour through shaping. There’s pros and cons to everything!]

 

Further reading (updated 7th May): Patricia McConnell talks about the advantages and disadvantages of clicking and luring.