Tag Archives: classical conditioning

12/12/13

Teach Your Dog How To Love Your Baby

This article is designed to help you establish a strong and lasting relationship between the baby and the dog – a relationship that will last a lifetime. These steps are relevant to after you have already brought the baby home and the dog was introduced to the baby.

The trick is to make an association in the mind of the dog between the baby and good things that can happen. You are normally tempted to pet the dog a lot when the baby is asleep while pushing the pet away when the baby is awake. That is understandable but the opposite is actually a lot better.

 

Sleeping border terrier puppy.

 

Offering Treats At The Right Time

You want to teach the dog that when he/she is around the baby, good things happen: petting, playing, treats and so on. Feed the dog when you feed the baby and when you walk the dog, if possible, take the baby with you. When you apply this strategy, the dog basically starts to love it when the baby is active and awake.

The problem is that such multi-tasking is quite difficult. It is a lot easier when there are two adults that live in the same home. If that is not the case, you can still do a lot by simply holding the baby and talking to the dog, stroking him, offering treats and tossing balls.

 

Sometimes Ignoring The Dog Is Better

When the baby is not around, use some reversed psychology. Try to ignore the dog when that is the case and eventually the pet will start to eagerly appreciate the time when the baby is active.

 

You Need Some Quiet Time

Having a baby is time consuming and there are moments in which you want to make sure that you can tend to the child’s needs without being bothered by the dog. Have designer dog beds in the same room where you will feed your baby. Whenever it is time to give the baby a bottle, offer a treat to your dog and more rewards should be given when the dog just stays on the bed. Once every few minutes, throw a small treat so that the association between baby feeding time and treats on the bed is established.

 

Dealing With Baby Sounds

In most cases the dog will ignore the loud baby signs but there are circumstances in which the pet needs some help in order to get to that level. If you see that the dog is distressed when loud baby noises are heard, try to associate them with something that the dog loves. Once again, the treats work! When the baby cries or squeals, throw a treat! The dog will thus realize that the loud baby noises are not a signal that something is wrong.

 

Babies Grow Up

Even if the dog ends up loving the baby because of the perception that good things happen when the child is around, as the baby grows, things do change. He/she will start grabbing, poking and sometimes bother the dog. In order to establish a very good relationship between the two, you need to also continue paying attention to what happens as the baby becomes a toddler.

 

This is a sponsored guest post.

03/26/13

Classical Conditioning in Dogs

‘Classical conditioning’ is a term originally coined by Ivan Pavlov.  This type of conditioning is highly relevant to dog training.

While using dogs to experiment on digestion, Pavlov noticed dogs had what he called “psychic secretion” of saliva, where the dogs seem to know when they were going to be fed and began to salivate.  On further investigation, he found that whenever his lab assistant entered the room, the dogs began to salivate.  Salivation is a reflex, that is, a behaviour outside of the dog’s control, but the dog learnt to exhibit this reflex when associated with an incoming lab assistant.  Pavlov modified his experiment to further examine this phenomena.

Poodle type dog jumping over an agility course jump.

From here, the specifics of classical conditioning (sometimes also called Pavlovian conditioning) became published and well known. Basically, classical conditioning is where a previously neutral thing becomes paired with the reflexes associated with something else.   Continue reading →

05/7/12

Dunbar on Classical Conditioning

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

Dunbar believes Classical Conditioning is a big deal in dog training.  He doesn’t believe in separating Operant Conditioning from Classical Conditioning. To Dunbar, the dog learns the same thing: In case of x, good things happen, and in case of y, bad things happen.

White poodle.

For a basic overview of classical conditioning:  Classical conditioning was named by Pavlov, who learnt that if he rung a bell before feeding dogs, overtime, the dogs would start to saliva

te at the sound of the bell alone.  Basically, classical conditioning is associative learning.  Dogs will associate things with certain stimuli.  In Dunbar’s view, however, he thinks that the brilliance of classical conditioning has been lost over time.  In his opinion, just because Pavlov worked with a reflex (i.e. the dog couldn’t choose to salivate, it happened itself), doesn’t mean that classical conditioning is only used for reflexes.  (This is normally the distinctive difference between classical conditioning and operant conditioning, but Dunbar ignores it and finds it irrelevant. Confusing!)

 

Classical conditioning should happen all through a dog’s life.  Treats should never be phased out for classical conditioning.  Dunbar said, “Don’t take you dog’s temperament for granted” and “If your dog is friendly, it can be friendlier”.

Dunbar particularly advocated Classical Conditioning for improving handling of dogs.  Particularly, classically conditioning collar grabs and other contact the dog may find unpleasant.

He talked about dog trainer Bill Campbell’s ‘jolly routine’, which is an over-the-top play response an owner ‘performs’ when a stimulus is seen.  The idea is the dog things, “Whenever my owner sees x, they get so happy!” – which in terms classically conditions the dog to like x.

While he believes there is better ways of getting rid of problem behaviour, he did talk about using ‘lightning strike’ verbal feedback for poor behaviour.  He described this as punishment in a praise sandwich.  For example, the dialogue would go: “good dog, very well done, lovely dog, excellent, good, good, yes, ASSHOIFJIDSHKLJ!!!, yes, good dog, good, very good”.

He also liked the use of classical conditioning in shelters, particularly in the Open Paw program, where dogs are rewarded for just being in the shelter and seeing people.

Dunbar describes classical conditioning as a ‘winning strategy’.

Further reading: my lecture notes from Paul McGreevy on Classical Conditioning.

External link:  Roger Abrantes’ post on “Unveiling the myth of reinforcers and punishers” 

Updated with additional notes 13/10/12.

04/28/12

Open Paw (a Dunbar project)

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

Have you heard about Open Paw?  It’s a shelter program designed to make pets happier in shelter environments, and improve their chances of finding a new home.

Along with the minimal health guidelines, kennel dogs need to meet 3 unfamiliar people a day.

Collie working breed type dog in a shelter.They advocate a classical conditioning approach of just ‘throwing treats’ at the dogs as you walk past, irrelevant to the behaviour.  Some have concerns that this rewards barking behaviour but, in reality, the dog often has a pause between barking behaviour and acknowledging the reward, and it’s more likely the dog will associate his quietness with the treat.  (Dog can’t sniff a treat and woof at the same time!)

The aim is to produce a quiet and pleasant environment in shelters, which people enjoy visiting.  The program also seeks to produce dogs that are ‘automatically’ well behaved (from all or none training) and more likely to stay in their new home.

If you’d like to learn more about Open Paw, the AnimalCAFE podcast may be entertaining for you.

04/7/12

Fearful Dogs (Dunbar)

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

In the seminar, Dunbar asked us what we were afraid of. People called out common fears like spiders, enclosed spaces, and speaking in public (along was the less common fear of “tree roots”), and from these suggestions Dunbar presented a scenario:

Imagine you are going to take an elevator that is damp and smelly, and made of tree roots, and full of spiders. It’s going to take you to the highest floor of the building, where you will deliver a public address – naked. And then base jump.

Now, if your fear is not spiders or tree roots, incorporate your own fears into the story. I am terrified of bees, and imagining getting into a lift of bees is a terrible idea to me.

And then consider: Fearful dogs are living with this very real fear, everyday. It’s not fair when we accept dog fears as “Oh, he’s scared of men” and “Yeah, she doesn’t like visitors”. It is not fair to ‘let it be’, for dogs to experience these very real fears on a daily basis. Instead, a dog’s fears should demands fixing. The solution is normally classical conditioning.

 

Rottweiler being hugged.

Hugging dogs is a bite risk, so dogs should be desensitised to the sensation. Photo © Ruthless Photos.

Treating Fear Issues

Treating fear issues in dogs is much the same as prevention protocols – That is: A bunch of classical conditioning. However, for an adult dog, it takes more time and is more dangerous. Dunbar believes we spend too much time trying to diagnose ‘why’ with aggressive dogs, but the majority of aggression problems are fear based. For that reason, he suggests the same treatment protocol and that we should ditch trying to figure out ‘why’.

Food is crucial when treating aggression. Normally, aggressive dogs do not find being patted or spoken to rewarding (especially if people are the source of their fear!), so classically conditioning with food is, what Dunbar called, “the only way”.

For Dunbar, treating a fearful dog involved giving them a bunch of food for interacting with people, and for tolerating their body to be touch (desensitisation).

Dogs often bite when they are touched on their collar, ears, mouth, feet, anus, when given a hug, or given a ‘kissy face’ (staring a dog in the eyes while holding their cheeks in your hands). For safety reasons, dogs should be desensitized to these interactions in order to reduce the likelihood of bites. This goes for all dogs, not just those that are fearful.

 

Further reading: McGreevy on Classical Conditioning