Tag Archives: dog training

12/7/11

Myrtle at 6 Weeks

We are very happy to introduce Myrtle, our newest resident.  Myrtle is 6 weeks old and is the daughter of my Clover, out of a dog in Victoria.  She was born a singleton puppy, and we were lucky enough to find two 9-day-old puppies that have been her siblings.  Myrtle is 3 days younger than her foster-siblings.

This mating has been a long time in the making, and so far, we are quite happy with the result.

So here is a video of Myrtle, at 6 weeks (and 1 day) old doing some training.  It is mostly fun – we are playing tug. I was going to edit out the minute where she goes and entertains herself but that, in itself, is quite amusing.  She pretty much knows ‘sit’ and ‘touch’, but and in this video we practice ‘give’ (the tug toy back) and ‘drop’.

I was happy with this training session. We both had fun, and that’s all I really want at this stage.

12/1/11

McGreevy and Non-Associative Learning

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

 

Paul McGreevy spoke a little about non-associative forms of learning.  I found these particularly interesting, as I have not actively considered these forms of learning before, let alone attended a seminar about them!  Though I had heard of habituation and sensitisation before, McGreevy clarified and solidified my prior understanding.

Mostly, the seminar considered classical and operant conditioining.  In both of these forms of learning, an association is made between one thing and another.  For example, if a dog hears the fridge open, they associate this with food, and start salivating.  Similarly, a dog may associate the action of sitting with a toy reward.

Dogs can learn to habituate to water.

However, training can also be non-associative.  Non associative learning uses a single stimuli (i.e. ‘thing’, trigger).  The two forms of non-associative learning, as McGreevy put it, are habituation and sensitisation.

 Habituation

Habituation is the simplest form of learning.  When an animal is repeatedly exposed to a stimuli, and their response decreases on each exposure, then they are habituating to the stimuli.

For example, a dog may startle at the sound of a door slamming shut in the wind initially.  However, as this occurs once or twice a day, the dog begins to startle less and, eventually, barely responds to the door slams. This dog has been habituated to the door slamming noise.

Habituation can occur at different rates.  It depends on the stimulus, the frequency of presentation, and the regularity of exposure.

The stimulus itself can be benign or more alarming. For example, a rock on the ground is less alarming than a bag blowing in the wind. In this way, the nature of the stimulus (i.e. the stimulus itself) can affect the likelihood of habituation taking place, with ‘boring’ stimuli more likely to be habituated to.

The frequency of presentation of the stimulus can also the rate of habituation.  Clearly, if an animal was exposed only once to an aversive stimuli, they are unlikely to reduce their response in subsequent exposures.  For example, some dogs are alarmed by the smell of predators, like foxes.  A dog exposed to fox smell may at first respond in a hyper-aroused or anxious way.  However, over time, the dog may begin to habituate to the smell of a fox if it was frequent (for example, if the dog was frequently walked along a route with fox smell).

Finally, the regularity of exposure is important.  If an animal is exposed to a stimulus only once a year or once every few months, it is unlikely to habituate.  For example, if the exposure was daily, then they are more likely to habituate to the phenomena.  McGreevy made reference to puppy schools, and how they normally happen on an irregular basis (i.e. once a week) and this is not enough for puppies to become habituated to people and other dogs.

Sensitisation

Sensitisation, on the other hand, is the opposite of habiutitation.  During sensitisation, the animal responds more to a stimulus after repeated exposure.  In this case, the stimulus itself has to be intrinsically aversive.  For example, dogs who are scared of thunderstorms can often get more fearful over time.

Our next posts in the McGreevy series will look at Classical Conditioning.

 

Further reading: Dogs deciding whether something is important or not?

 

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

11/27/11

McGreevy on ‘The Keys’ to Dog Training

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

 

Paul McGreevy wrote a book, Carrots and Sticks (2nd edition to be released soon), where he interviewed a number of animal trainers internationally.  Consequently, he identified two key components to animal training: Timing and consistency.

Photos © Ruthless Photos

Good timing is imperative to effective training.  This means appropriately rewarding and punishing animals, at the right moment. (Or using a marker to do so.)

Consistency was also important to animal training.  He argued that inconsistency impedes training and learning, and increases confusion for the animal.  McGreevy explained that, if different people were training an animal, then the animal would have to generalise the training methods and so confusion could occur.  He also explained the value in isolation, in order to teach the animal to value human attention, and allow the trainer to be entirely consistent when they do interact with the animal.

Timing and consistency are considered important across all species.

Though it was only mentioned in passing, I think both timing and consistency as a whole could be described by schedules of reinforcement.  Schedules of reinforcement are almost ‘rules’ that explain how varying delivery of reinforcement can product different results in the animal’s response.  Reinforcement can be based either on ‘all or nothing’ (continuous reinforcement, or no reinforcement seeking extinction), or after a fixed or variable amount of time, or after a fixed or variable amount of responses/behaviours.

More McGreevy seminar based posts to come!

 

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

11/22/11

Clover Heelwork – 20th November

I frequently post critiques on other people’s videos around the blogosphere, so I thought I was well over due to upload a training video for others to critique. However, I am probably my own worst critique.

Below is a two and a half minute video of Clover doing some heeling training.

My own comments:

Overall, I am happy with her attitude and willingness to work, especially considering she still has a bit of ‘baby brain’ (her puppy was born 4 weeks ago!).

I am not sure, after watching this video, if I should conduct tug-rewards on this slippery surface. Clover doesn’t seem unhappy about her lack of traction, but I am not sure if it’s great for her body.

I didn’t realise how wonky I am on my feet! There are a few times I look like I’m going to fall over, and my feet go weird ways. Some of this is probably due to the hypermobility of my joints, but I am going to be more conscious of having clear body cues. I think at the moment, Clover has to make some guesses about where I was going next.

I am not quite happy with some of my reward points.I should’ve rewarded her eye contact more, and sometimes she was out of position. Next session will be a food session to help try to pinpoint the heel position.

Keep in mind, we haven’t done any training sessions for at least 2 months! So I am pretty happy with her comeback performance here.

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.