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Training Your Dog. (5).

Combining elements of each:
In contemporary dog training, a lot of attention is paid to operant conditioning -- "clicker training" is nothing more or less than the real-world application of one small part of Skinner's research. But classical conditioning is almost always present, and should be kept in mind: think about the dog who hears the bell -- his drooling represents the kind of happy anticipation that we want in a working dog. Classical conditioning, in its practical application, is all about training for attitude.
If it associates good stuff (positive reinforcement) with training situations (think of that as the bell ringing) your dog will show the same kind of eagerness that you'd expect if you extrapolate from Pavlov's droolers. In addition, even with operant conditioning on a dog, you will eventually associate a command with the behavior, so that you can elicit the behaviour from a stimulus! Such a sequence would be:
dog offers behavior (say a sit)
dog is rewarded
cycle continues until dog continually offers behavior
trainer now says "sit"
dog sits
dog is rewarded
This combines elements of both operant and classic conditioning.

Rewards and Corrections:
Bear in mind the following important points:

A REWARD results in an increase in the selected behavior.
A CORRECTION results in a decrease in the selected behavior.
Well that seems obvious enough, why did I bother putting those down? Because all too often, obvious as they may be, an astonishing number of people ignore them. How many times have you seen someone call their dog over and over and over again while the dog blithely ignores them? How many people wind up automatically rewarding their dog all the time until they find that the dog is either bored and wanders off, or won't do a thing unless the food is held in front of them? How many people smack their puppies when he soils in the house but never wind up with a house-trained dog?

Let's examine each of these scenarios in detail.
The person who calls their dog repeatedly without doing anything is in fact teaching their dog that the "Come" command is meaningless. The dog is neither being rewarded for the correct behavior nor being corrected for the unwanted behavior. Therefore "Come" has no particular meaning for this dog.

To Be Continued.

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Training Your Dog. (4).

Classical Conditioning:
The principles of classical conditioning were worked out early in this century by Pavlov, and thus is also called Pavlovian conditioning. In the original experiments, a bell was rung, and the subject (as it happens, a dog) was given food; eventually, the dog began to salivate on hearing the bell, apparently anticipating the arrival of the food. This is pure stimulant-response stuff, since the signal (the bell) always comes before the reinforcement, and the dog doesn't do anything to make the bell ring.

So we start with:
trainer rings bell (stimulus)
dog gets food (reinforcement)
And end up with:
trainer rings bell
dog drools (response)
dog gets food

How can this be used? A great way to use classical conditioning is to teach the dog secondary rewards. Let's say you want to use a particular word or even a particular sound (such as a click) as a reward just because it is simpler than whatever your dog's best primary reward is. So train your dog by saying the word or making the sound and then treating him with a primary reward. He'll start to associate the two quickly and your alternative will become a suitable interim reward for your dog. You'll need to refresh the association from time to time, of course, but it does expand your possible repertoire for telling your dog "You done good!"
If you're observant, you'll also notice that most dogs are classically conditioned. If you say "Sit!" and they sit, that is a stimulus- response sequence no matter how the sit itself was taught.

Operant Conditioning:
B.F. Skinner outlined the principles of what he termed "operant conditioning." In contrast to classical conditioning, in operant conditioning the reinforcement cycle starts with some action on the part of the trainee (in Skinner's language, the operant). Operant conditioning is therefore always dependent on behavior, whereas classical conditioning is not.

We have:
dog does something (operant behavior)
dog gets food (positive reinforcement)

Under this theory, if we control which behaviors are reinforced, we should be able to get the dog to offer those behaviors more often. If the dog gets good stuff in association with a particular behavior, he's likely to repeat it; if something bad happens, he's less likely to repeat it. In practical training terms, this means that if Andy picks up his dumbbell (step 1), Andy gets some turkey (step 2); if he doesn't, he doesn't get the turkey. The result should be that in the long run, Andy will grab the dumbbell eagerly, even if he isn't a natural retriever.

To Be Continued.

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