{"id":1335,"date":"2012-05-02T08:41:10","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T22:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/?p=1335"},"modified":"2021-08-02T17:36:38","modified_gmt":"2021-08-02T07:06:38","slug":"lure-reward-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/dog-behaviour\/dog-training-dog-behaviour\/lure-reward-training\/","title":{"rendered":"Lure Reward Training"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See\u00a0index<\/a>.<\/small><\/small><\/p>\n

Dunbar promotes lure-reward training.\u00a0 This training uses a lure in order to accomplish a behaviour, and a reward to communicate the desirability of the behaviour lured.<\/p>\n

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\"Young<\/a>

Even young puppies can be lured by food on fingers, or even the sucking reflex itself. Photo \u00a9 Ruthless Photos.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Steps of Lure Reward Training<\/span><\/p>\n

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

1: Request (i.e. use the cue \u2013 e.g. say \u201csit\u201d)<\/p>\n

2: Lure (i.e. get the behaviour \u2013 e.g. use food to get the dog\u2019s nose up and bum down)<\/p>\n

3: Response (the dog performs the behaviour)<\/p>\n

4: Reward the dog<\/p>\n

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1,3,4 is always clear, but the lure to get a behaviour (2) may need some creativity.<\/p>\n

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There may also be several lures for one behaviour.\u00a0 If this is the case, they should be ranked from most desirable to least.\u00a0 For example, if you were training a dog to eliminate on cue, you could \u2018lure\u2019 the behaviour by confinement (i.e. putting the dog in a crate for a period of time) or by an olfactory lure (pee smell).\u00a0 It\u2019s probably easier to crate your dog than to carry pee in a bottle, but it\u2019s up to you to determine the best lure for you and your dog.<\/p>\n

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Once you\u2019ve got the behaviour, you can start to progress through the stages of luring.\u00a0 Lures should be phased within a few repetitions, and rewards should become \u2018life rewards\u2019 instead of extrinsic rewards in a brief period of time.<\/p>\n

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The stages of reward training is phasing out, first, the lure and, second, the reward, and then enforcing compliance (without pain).<\/p>\n

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Stage One \u2013 Phase Out the Lure<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a teaching phase.\u00a0 We are teaching the dog a cue (e.g. \u201csit\u201d or \u201cdrop\u201d or \u201cpee\u201d) in this stage, and explaining to him what our words mean by using a lure.\u00a0 The lure is increasing the likelihood of a behaviour occurring, so that that behaviour can be rewarded.\u00a0 The lure is used a few times to get the behaviour, to start a reward history.\u00a0 Once this has been achieved, it is then time to getting rid of the lure.<\/p>\n

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Normally, when you are using a food lure, there is a natural hand cue that goes along with it.\u00a0 You can phase out the food lure to \u2018invisible food\u2019, and start to use a hand lure\/signal.\u00a0 (Of course, the food is still given as a reward, but the food is no longer acting as a lure.)<\/p>\n

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For a puppy, within 4 trials, you should be able to get 7 behaviours with one treat.\u00a0 (Dunbar suggests \u201csit\u201d, \u201cdown\u201d, \u201csit\u201d, \u201cstand\u201d, \u201cdown\u201d, \u201cstand\u201d as it practices all position changes.)<\/p>\n

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From here, you can start the process of fading the physical hand signal.\u00a0 To this requires precise timing:\u00a0 A verbal cue should occur before the hand signal (and any other signal!).\u00a0 This is a form of \u2018good anticipation\u2019 \u2013 using anticipation to our advantage.<\/p>\n

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Stage Two \u2013 Phase Out the Reward<\/span><\/p>\n

This is \u201c90%\u201d (according to Dunbar) of dog training \u2013 phasing out the food reward and motivating the dog to give his best response.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 He also suggested putting the 8 behaviour problems on cue and using them as a reward (more on this later).<\/p>\n

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Dogs that really enjoying playing with other dogs and going for walks can benefit from these being used as rewards\u2026 If they\u2019re not being used as rewards then they can serve as a big distraction later!\u00a0 You can intersperse behaviour requests throughout a walk, and then continued walking is the reward.<\/p>\n

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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). \u00a0This is what happens if you don’t phase the lure, and don\u2019t use excellent life rewards.<\/p>\n

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Stage Three \u2013 Enforce the Response (without pain)<\/span><\/p>\n

The third stage in lure reward training is enforcing the dog\u2019s compliance.\u00a0 This can be achieved through verbal punishments<\/a> and specific redirection, and also the DogCon3 method.<\/p>\n

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The DogCon3 method is the idea that dogs can learn different names mean different levels of compliance.\u00a0 For example, Ian suggests a casual name as DogCon1 (e.g. \u201cMax\u201d), a more formal name as DogCon2 (e.g. \u201cMaxwell\u201d), and perhaps a maximum formality name meaning competition style as DogCon3 (e.g. \u201cMister Maxwell\u201d).\u00a0 If you use the DogCon1 name, you are \u2018suggesting\u2019 the dog follow your cue, while if you use the DogCon2 name you will \u2018insist\u2019 the dog performs the behaviour.\u00a0 The DogCon3 name conveys to the dog that you are after precision and pizazz in their compliance.<\/p>\n

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The idea in using DogCon3 is that you, inevitably, give more than one command often.\u00a0 The DogCon3 system means that your dog will be able to understand when you\u2019re merely \u2018chatting\u2019 and when you \u2018mean it\u2019.<\/p>\n

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For a dog that does not follow a cue preceded by their DogCon2 name, then punishment and repetitive instruction is needed.<\/p>\n

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\n<\/span><\/p>\n

What’s to like about lure reward training?<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Because luring gets the behaviour from the first trial, differential reinforcement can be used there on.<\/p>\n

Lure reward training is quick, you say \u201csit\u201d, you lure the sit, and then you\u2019re done!\u00a0 Because it\u2019s quick, it inspires trainers (especially new dog owners) to keep going, and it\u2019s easy to then implement differential reinforcement to improve the quality of response.<\/p>\n

You can work on a number of different lured behaviours at once.<\/p>\n

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\u2026 I don\u2019t find clickers hard to fade, but I find luring hand motions hard to fade\u2026 But, clickers take longer to get a behaviour through shaping. There\u2019s pros and cons to everything!]<\/em><\/p>\n

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Further reading (updated 7th May): Patricia McConnell talks about the\u00a0advantages\u00a0and disadvantages of clicking and luring<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dunbar promotes lure reward training. Luring the behaviour is the easy part – finding a lure and then phasing the lure, the reward, and enforcing the behaviour, are more tricky!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[254],"tags":[12,164,442,11,376,375,439,441,440,53],"class_list":["post-1335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dog-training-dog-behaviour","tag-dog","tag-dog-training","tag-dogcon3","tag-dogs","tag-dunbar","tag-ian-dunbar","tag-lure","tag-lure-reward-training","tag-lures","tag-training"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1335"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4947,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1335\/revisions\/4947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leemakennels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}