Marking Good Behavior – Part 1

(The Secret of Dog Training) – Part 1

Dogs in general are easy to explain— “How can I get what I want now!”

Now it’s not that they are sitting around your house, twiddling their paws, planning ways to thwart you. But they do experiment with behavior — barking, jumping, chewing, nipping, playing keep away, etc., all to get your attention. It works and you pay attention to them. They’ve got you perfectly trained.

Even if you tell them no, glare at them, or push them away, that’s attention and reinforces the bad behavior.

You can reverse that trend by paying more attention to them when they are being good. Don’t ever take good behavior for granted, especially calm sits and downs. If you don’t pay attention to them when they are being good, what do you think they’re going to do????? Be bad of course, because you’ll absolutely pay attention to them then.

Puppy Logan is being reinforced for sitting (Photo courtesy of Lani Jones)

Make sure your dog knows it’s doing something right by communicating that to them with a word (usually YES or GOOD) or a sound (a clicker) followed by a reinforcement.

Reinforcement doesn’t always have to be food treats. It can be playing with a toy, petting, praise, a smile from across the room, going for a walk, playing with another dog, chasing a squirrel in the yard, pointing a bird, etc. Basically anything your dog likes can be used as a reinforcement. But you must always and forever acknowledge your dog’s good behavior and ignore the bad behavior as much as possible.

Reinforcement must be reinforcing for your dog and not you. So if you are planning on using petting for reinforcement, make sure your dog likes it. The overwhelming majority of dogs hate being petted on top of their heads, but almost everyone pets them there. Put yourself in their place… “here comes the big hand coming down towards me with a giant body looming behind it.” They hate it!!! And, in the winter it’s easy to accidentally static shock your dog and you certainly don’t want to shock them on their heads. You can train them to like being petted on their heads by pairing it with treats. So when petting always start under the chin, on the chest or on the side of the neck, then come back to the head.

When teaching new behaviors, generally treats are used for reinforcement before switching to another reinforcement.   When your dog first hears a marker word or sound, he will not know that it means anything. So you have to help your dog understand what it means by “charging your marker.” In other words, give that word or sound some value by pairing it with treats — just like you’d charge a battery.

To charge your marker, start with a bag of tiny (about 1/4 inch square at the most), soft and stinky treats. Keep your treats handy but out of sight.  Say your word or click your clicker, pause for no more than one second then deliver the treat. Repeat at least 20 times.

In the second part of this article, Sally will explain when and how implement the marker to reinforce good behavior.

Do you clicker train or use other types of positive reinforcement training with your Weim?  Please comment below.