Category Archives: Dog Behaviour

11/9/11

McGreevy on Punishing Dogs

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

 

Again, this article refers to operant conditioning principles.  I suggest anyone without prior knowledge of operant conditioning to refer to Crystal at Reactive Champion’s post on operant conditioning.

Punishment is anything that reduces the frequency of behaviour.  Positive punishment is when something bad is added (e.g. rattling a can of stones if a dog barks), and negative punishment is when something good is removed (e.g. when your puppy mouths you and you exit the room).

RuthlessPhotos.com

These are both called punishments as they reduce the frequency of behaviour.  Negative reinforcement is related, as this involves removing something bad to act as a reward (e.g. a dog who doesn’t like being confined could be rewarded for calm quite behaviour in that confine by being released from that confine).

However, punishment in dog training is often only referring to an aversive introduced to suppress behaviour.

McGreevy did not advocate the use of punishment when training dogs.  He felt that punishment (or causing dogs to feel threatened, pained, uncomfortable, disappointed, or fearful) was simply ‘not good’ for dogs.  Furthermore, punishments can sometimes have long-term consequences, as dogs are often sensitive.  (He summarised it as, “It’s hard to unteach fear.”)  Dogs can also associate some of their emotions from punishments with people, which can be undesirable.

Punishment, however, is unavoidable.  McGreevy explained that putting a dog on a collar almost always is negative punishment (taking the dog away from good things), but trainers can still seek to use as little punishment as possible.  Punishment does not have to be abusive, it is just feedback to help a dog understand that some behaviour is unproductive.  Mild punishment (like a no reward marker) can be effective in reducing behaviours, but it is also risky as it can lower motivation.

Punishment should be used as little as possible, or else the dog may develop learned helplessness.  He described punishment as being ‘a step towards habituation’.  Punishment, when used, often leads to the need for more punishment.  Additionally, use of positive punishment for anxiety-related behaviours could escalate the animal’s distress.

McGreevy rejected the use of check chains, calling them frustrating, painful, and dangerous.  He congratulated the dog community for largely rejecting their use.

Overall, McGreevy did not have anything revolutionary to saying about punishments, but I hope this still provides some interesting thoughts regarding dog training.

 

Further reading: Ian Dunbar on Punishment

 

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

11/2/11

McGreevy on Operant Conditioning

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

 

Please note: This article assumes some prior knowledge of operant or instrumental conditioning, as it mostly focuses on McGreevy’s comments on operant and instrumental conditioning, rather than on explaining these terms itself. If you are lacking a comprehensive understanding of Operant Conditioning, then I suggest this page from Crystal at Reactive Champion blog.  If you already have some idea of operant conditioning, come on in.  This may be confusing, but we can only hope it may add to your understanding.

Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is when the animal’s voluntary response is instrumental (i.e. important) in establishing the consequence (i.e. reinforcement or punishment).  (By voluntary, we mean responses that the animal has control over.  Involuntary would be things like salivating or growing hair.)

McGreevy used the diagram below to consider operant conditioning.

Here, the ‘x’ marks the spot of neutral stimuli that does not modify behaviours.  That is, a neutral experience.  From here, stimuli can either be reinforcing and increase the probability of behaviours, or they can be punishing, and decrease the animal’s responses in question.  The purple arrows indicate negative punishment (-P) and negative reinforcement (-R).  Negative punishments use the removal of attractive stimuli to make a response less probable.  Negative reinforcements uses the removal of adverse stimuli to make a response more probable. Continue reading →

03/27/11

7 Tips for Improving Your Dog Recall

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

 

One of Paul McGreevy’s training insights was his list of “7 tips for improving your dog recall”.  My notes detail his list as the below, however I may have used my own words to describe some of his tips!

    1. Reward continuously until your pup is skeletally mature
    2. Reward intermittently after your pup is skeletally mature
    3. If dog doesn’t want to come back, increase the reward
      One of the focuses of McGreevy’s overall series was to reward with what the dog wants and likes, not what you think it should want and like.  Dogs have personal tastes and they need to be rewarded with what they want – because otherwise the reward runs the risk of not actually serving as reinforcement (i.e. something that increases the likelihood of the behaviour occurring).

Clover recalling to me and waiting for her reward.

    1. Use the best ever jackpots
      Coming back should be highly rewarded, and including jackpots in your reward schedule is a good practice to secure a reliable recall.
    2. Run backwards when dog approaches
      As we know, dogs like to chase things, and dogs like fun.  In this way, running backwards is a fun game to the dog, and also changes things up, making the recall process more exciting.
    3. Use release command
      This is a good tip that is perhaps under-emphasised.  Dogs need to know when they need to come back, and then when they’re free to do their own thing. If they are confused about this, then there is a risk of tarnishing the recall.

Clover, having received a release command, sets off.

  1. Use the premack principle
    The premack principle is basically that behaviours that the dog does not want to do can be reinforced by behaviours the dog does want to do.  That is, you can use what your dog wants to do as rewards.  So if your dog wants to run, jump, swim, etc, you can recall your dog and then reward him by sending him to run, jump, swim, etc.

A blurry Clover recalls

Though these do provide food for thought, I am not sure if I would put these as the top 7 most important things for improving a recall. I also do not think that this list suits the lay-person, the casual dog owner.  Considering these suggestions, and my past experience, I am pleased to announce my very first guest post at AllYouNeedIsLists.com.  This post covers my 7 tips for improving your dog recall, written for the dog-owner and not the dog-enthusiast.

 

Further reading: Seven Steps to Off-Leash Reliability

 

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

03/25/11

Paul McGreevy Seminars

Recently, I had the pleasure of listening to Paul McGreevy present a two-day lecture.

Paul McGreevy is from The University of Sydney’s faculty of vet science. He is a vet that practiced in the UK for 5 years, before pursuing an interest in behaviour.  His approach is scientific, with frequent references to academic studies throughout his lectures.  He is the author of A Modern Dog’s Life (“a rant about what we could do better for welfare”) and Carrots and Sticks (interviews with animal trainers globally).  He concluded his sessions with an emphasis on the help science can provide to the training field, that there is “room for humanity” within science, and there is still plenty to learn.

Photos © Ruthless Photos

I have been struggling for several weeks to begin writing my summary of his two-day seminar.  I think that, due to the breadth of topics covered, I have had a little difficulty organising my thoughts and the best order for presenting the topics on this blog.

What I have decided may be best is to summarise some of the topics covered, in preparation for more in-depth posts as time progresses.  As such, this post is likely to be edited overtime and act as an index to future posts.

Firstly, I thoroughly enjoyed the scientific nature of this seminar.  Paul McGreevy went into details examining many aspects on the nature of dog science, and then also specific dog studies that has taken place.  In a way, Paul described a very similar phenomena to what I described in my post Paucity in Dog Science.  However, this is a lot more to the dog-science conundrum than I initially thought. I will review this topic with enthusiasm!

Paul McGreevy also spoke a great deal about dog breeding, with a particular focus on dog health.  As a dog breeder, I was perhaps sensitive to this information, but I surprisingly found myself quite receptive to his ideas.  Basically, Paul believes that the health of dogs should be at the forefront of breeding practices and that inherited disorders should be considered a form of cruelty.

This was a dog training seminar, so Paul did consider the four quadrants of operant conditioning and other training principles (such as classical conditioning and non-associative learning) a great deal. He talked about what he thought were ‘the keys’ to dog training. He also spoke specifically about improving dog recalls.  Though there were the occasional tidbits that offered new insights, for the most part the information was not new to me.  However, Paul talked a lot about horse training which I found incredibly interesting.  I have a curiosity in horses, yet not enough to actively pursue the subject.

Paul considered the ethical and welfare issues concerning working dogs.  That is, working dogs in all aspects – from sheep dogs, to assistance dogs, to police or customs dogs.  This was definitely thought provoking, and another issue I will look forward to examining in more depth.  He refers to his work with the Australian Working Dog Survey, though I am yet to read this document thoroughly.

The book Paul wrote, and refers to, A Modern Dog’s Life, concerns the stresses of day-to-day life that dogs have to contend with. Though these weren’t at the forefront of his seminar, they were addressed throughout and did provide interesting food-for-thought. These also encompasses, in some ways, the extraordinary dog senses and the challenges these pose for dog trainers.  He also considered how desexing, disease and aging could influence behaviour.

 

McGreevy Seminar Index

Dog Training

McGreevy on ‘The Keys’ to Dog Training

Classical Conditioning Bits

Operant Conditioning Bits

McGreevy on Rewarding Dogs

McGreevy on Punishing Dogs

McGreevy on Non-Associative Learning

General Dog Training Thoughts from Paul McGreevy

7 Tips for Improving Your Dog Recall

Other

Dog Senses (with Paul McGreevy)

Questioning Working Dogs (the ethics of dogs working for us)

McGreevy’s Thoughts on Dog Breeding

McGreevy’s Thoughts on Dog Science

McGreevy on a Modern Dog’s Life

Vets, Sex, Disease, and Aging

01/5/11

Mini-Jackpotting

I’ve always been somewhat sceptical on the concept of jackpotting.  I don’t know why it has never sat well with me – it just seems a bit much to comprehend that dogs can have an understanding of a degree of success.

That being said, my experience does indicate some benefits in jackpotting.  I guess the best description of what I do is ‘mini-jackpotting’.This is what I use when free shaping behaviours, and I reward ‘more successful’ attempts with more food.

Over the last couple of days, I have been training scent identification and indication.  The process was very slow, until I started mini-jackpotting. In this example, my scent was a teabag and I wanted my dog to scratch/dig at the teabag.

Over the session, I was rewarded different interactions in different ways.  My dog would be rewarded with one piece of kibble if the looked at or moved towards the teabag.  I rewarded touching the object with a paw with numerous bits (about 5 pieces). An actual scratch or dig with about 10 pieces.

My dog was very slow at first, but mini-jackpotting seemed to very much speed up the learning process.  There are several reasons that this may be the case…

  1. I read once that dogs understand the time of a reward more than the quantity of the reward… i.e. Dogs find it more rewarding to be given 5 treats in a row, one after the other, rather than being given a handful of 5 treats.  So, dogs find a long reward more rewarding. (Unfortunately I don’t recall the source of this suggestion.)  As it takes more time to eat numerous treats, perhaps the dog understands this as more rewarding.
  2. Another approach on the time front is that when the dog is eating numerous treats, they are actually having time to think. Perhaps when I reward many-treats at once, the dog has more of an opportunity to think through and the improvements I see towards my target behaviour are actually from this thinking time, rather than the reward itself.
  3. The dog might actually understand that if they do x they get more treats than if they do y!

This is the most thought I’ve ever given to ‘mini jackpotting’, and I haven’t been very logical in its implementation.  If this system occurred by accident or subconscious desire to jackpot, I am unsure.  However, I have found it to be quite successful and I would be interested to see if anyone has had similar success.

Further reading: Schedules of Reinforcement