Behavior Modification
Have you ever wondered why your dog is not doing what you want? The good news is whether you teach your dog basic obedience or you want to improve his IGP skills – it is all about Behavior Modification. Those of us who know how Behavior Modification works can teach their dogs almost anything!
Regardless of what we are teaching our dogs, it is all about Behavior Modification. In its simplicity:
Positive (pleasant) consequences increase the frequency of a behavior. During positive training, we reinforce the dog after the correct behavior, or withhold reinforcement and ignore the incorrect behavior.
Negative (unpleasant) consequences decrease the incidence or completely extinguish a behavior. Remember the seat belt alarm? At some point, you give in and put the seat belt on to stop the annoying sound.
We use a Double-Reinforcement System, which includes Positive and Negative Reinforcement. We will dive in the difference between the two at a later time.
Please take a look at the video exhibiting Positive Reinforcement:
04:34 sec – the handler asks the dog to Down, when the dog does, the handler marks and reinforces with a treat.
04:56 sec – the dog tries to get up, the handler ignores and lures the dog back into the down position.
Every time the dog does the correct behavior, the dog receives a treat.
Let’s look at Negative Reinforcement:
05:28 sec – the handler asks the dog to Sit and applies leash guidance (pulls on leash gently), the moment the dog sits, the leash relaxes, the dog does not receive any other reinforcement and is released. Every time the dog does the correct behavior, the leash relaxes bringing comfort to the dog.
We now combine both types of reinforcement:
05:52 sec – the handler asks the dog to Sit and applies leash guidance, the moment the dog sits, the leash relaxes, the handler marks the correct behavior and gives the dog a treat.
We will get into the details of how we use the leash as a Negative Reinforcer at a later date. The most important thing to remember is to apply pressure “as little as possible and as much as necessary.” Not enough does not bring a result, too much causes stress.