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Created by the KDTC Competitive Class Reorganization Committee copyright 1999 by KDTC |
| Baiting | Using food as a lure to get the dog to exhibit a certain behavior. For example, holding food up in front and slightly ahead of the dog's nose and moving up will usually cause the dog to sit. Warning: dogs can be lured to perform lots of behaviors without ever being trained to perform them. Until the food is totally out of the picture when the behavior is offered, the behavior is not trained. Most behaviors are introduced using food as a lure. This lure must be removed as soon as possible for training to occur. |
| Breaking down a behavior | Each obedience behavior is made up of many small steps. Trainers will have the most success if each step is taught separately and then chained together. For example, the recall consists of: sit, sit-stay, come, front, wait for the finish command and finish. |
| Chaining behaviors | Every obedience exercise is made up of many small behaviors strung together. Each piece must be separately taught and then chained together. Backwards chaining is when the last part is taught first, then the second to last,.... Forwards chaining is the reverse. Studies have shown that superior performance results from backwards chaining, since the subject is moving towards the things s/he knows best (taught first). An obedience example is the utility signal exercise. The recall signal is taught first. Then the dog is taught the sit-from-a-down signal. Then those two can be chained together. The dog is then taught the down- from-a-stand signal and it is chained with the first two. Finally, the dog is taught the stand-during-heeling signal and the entire exercise is finished. |
| Choose to Heel | A training technique for teaching heeling where the dog is not forced into heel position (with a leash) but reinforced when s/he is in the correct position. Choose to Heel is especially effective with puppies, who are learning that learning is fun. Dawn Jecs is credited with inventing the term "Choose to Heel". |
| Conditioned Reinforcer | see "Secondary Reinforcer" |
| Correction | see "Punishment" |
| Emotional Control | There are two important aspects of emotional control in dog training. The first is for the handler: corrections must never be given with strong, negative emotion; praise must be happy and sincere. For the dog, a balance must be maintained between respect for the handler (pack instinct) and relaxation/having fun. |
| Food | Food is used to teach exercises. It should be in small pieces and the food should be something your dog considers reinforcing. Most dogs love cheese, but it is a bit messy to work with. Hot dogs (raw or cooked) work with some dogs; others prefer liver prepared in various ways. Some even work for vegetables. As a handler you have no control over what your dog considers worth working for. Biscuits are usually a poor choice, since they need to be chewed and take time and attention away from the training. |
| Food delay | When a dog begins to know an exercise, then one of the steps in cementing this understanding is "food delay". The food comes when a behavior has been extended in time (many steps of heeling) or after a number of repetitions. |
| Foodless Training Sessions | Periodically, you should test your dog's understanding of the exercises and the training relationship you have developed by conducting foodless training sessions. Your praise and play should also have become motivating to your dog. |
| FUNdamentals | Keep the fun in fundamentals. Great concert pianists practice scales every day---but they understand why. Dog's don't know why they are subjected to endless, repetitive training in fronts, finishes and tiny pieces of heeling. You must provide the excitement, since this kind of practice is very de-motivating. Break it up into pieces, or get one good one, jackpot and move on. |
| Jackpot | A jackpot is a larger quantity of food than is usually given for a correct response. Often it is "better" food, from the dog's perspective. It can be used when the dog makes a break-through in understanding to really accentuate that moment in the dog's mind. Jackpots can also be used to good effect to fix a dog's attitude if the handler has made training unpleasant or too boring. |
| Learned Helplessness | If a dog perceives that his actions and the consequences are not connected, then a situation called "learned helplessness" may result. A dog exhibiting learned helplessness will make either no effort or very little effort to perform the exercise in question. For example, if sometimes the dog is praised and encouraged to heel along with the handler and sometimes the dog is popped and jerked to heel along with the handler and the dog doesn't understand what causes the handler to respond in these two very different ways, then the dog may decide that no matter what he does, the handler's behavior is unpredictable. |
| Luring | see "Baiting" |
| Maturity | Dogs require a certain degree of both physical and mental maturity to perform in obedience competition. While the novice exercises can be taught to the occasional six month old puppy, it would be unusual for that puppy to be able to handle the inevitable stress of showing at that age. Jumping higher than the dog's elbows should be delayed until after the dog is one year of age; older in larger breeds. Most competitive trainers aim to have the fundamentals of all three obedience classes (novice, open and utility) taught by the time the dog is two, and to exhibit the dog beginning at about that time. Every dog is different and whether that timetable can be met will depend not just on what the dog knows but on how s/he handles stress and excitement. |
| Mistakes | Dogs are not robots; they make the occasional mistake. Thinking trainers recognize this and help the dog learn from them. However, almost every error seen in the obedience ring is caused by the handler: either it is a handler error or a training error. Dogs aren't spiteful, they don't "blow you off", they either are able to perform in the situation or they have not been taught how. |
| Negative Reinforcement | Describes a training situation in which a negative reinforcer is used. Negative reinforcement is NOT a fancy word for punishment or correction!! |
| Negative Reinforcer | Something which is removed and the behavior immediately preceding the removal increases in frequency. Example: I pinch my dog's ear and the instant he takes the dumbbell I stop pinching. If the behavior "taking the dumbbell" increases, then the ear pinch was a negative reinforcer. |
| Opposition training | Opposition training is a way to increase the dog's speed by preventing a response and then suddenly allowing it. One example is the restrained recall, where the dog is prevented from responding and then suddenly released. The result is to teach a pattern of responding to the "come" command at a run. |
| Positive Reinforcement | Describes a training situation in which a positive reinforcer is used. The word "reinforcement" means that the chances of the behavior immediately preceding it will be repeated are increased. |
| Positive Reinforcer | Something which increases the chance that the behavior immediately preceding it will be repeated. Example: My dog looks at me and I give her a piece of food. If her behavior ("looking at me") increases, then the piece of food is a positive reinforcer. Warning--your dog tells you what can act as a primary reinforcer; you can't decide. For some dogs, it might be a cheerio; others like popcorn; others like pieces of hot dog or cheddar cheese. |
| Praise and play | We are training with food and secondary reinforcers, but these are not the only things which our dogs consider reinforcing. You should warmly praise your dog when appropriate and develop games you can play during training (or to break up a long training session). Most dogs are puppies at heart: they like tug games and pushing games and jumping-up games. You can't take toys or food into the obedience competition ring, but you will be there and your praise and petting are always available between exercises. |
| Primary Reinforcer | Something which the dog inherently likes; examples might include food, opportunity to play with a toy or the opportunity to jump up on you. |
| Punishment | Something which decreases the chance that the behavior immediately preceding it will be repeated. Example: My dog potties in the house and I yell at her and shake her. If her behavior ("pottying in the house") decreases, then the yelling and shaking is a punishment. Another example: my trained dog begins to get up on the sit-stay so I jerk upward on the leash. If her behavior ("getting up during the stay") decreases, then the leash correction was a punishment. Note: many thousands of studies have shown that positive reinforcement alone is more effective than punishment alone; many thousands of dog trainers have shown that a judicious combination is the easiest way to train a dog. |
| Rewarding | Used as a synonym for reinforcing: delivering the food/praise/play. |
| Secondary Reinforcer | Something which acts just like a primary reinforcer but which the dog has been taught to respond to. We will create a secondary reinforcer by pairing it with a primary reinforcer. In class, we will use the word "READY" as a secondary reinforcer. |
| Shaping (targeting) | Shaping refers to teaching an exercise by rewarding behaviors which are close to the desired result and then upping the criteria until the dog performs the correct response. An obedience example could be the utility go-out. The correct behavior involves running about 45 feet down the ring. It can be shaped by teaching the dog to run five feet (to a target), then 10 feet, then 15 feet,.... Then the target can be reduced in visibility until the correct exercise is performed. Many trainers also teach a retrieve by shaping: first the dog looks at the dumbbell, then touches it, then touches it with his/her teeth, then takes it,... |
| Silent Correction | A silent correction is a leash pop given without a verbal cue. This is not recommended, since the dog isn't given a clear understanding of the reason for the correction. |
| Strong Cues | A strong cue is a cue which the dog knows. A weak cue is the one s/he is less familiar with. For example, the dog knows the verbal COME command (strong cue) and we wish to establish the hand signal come (weak cue). The weak cue should be given first followed by a brief (one second) pause and then the strong cue should be given. |
| Timing | The expression "timing" refers to a trainer's ability to deliver consequences of a dog's behavior to the dog so that it is understood correctly. For example, if my dog is watching me and just as he looks away, I say READY, then my timing was poor--I reinforced the "looking away" instead of the "watch". |
| Training Balance | Training exercises can be roughly lumped into those requiring a great deal of control and those which are active (and therefore more fun for most dogs). Working a lot of control exercises in a row (examples: stays, fronts, sits during heeling) tends to be de-motivating for most dogs. Training sessions must be planned to mix up active exercises (examples: recalls, retrieves) with control exercises. |
| Weak Cues | See "Strong Cues" |