Shaping your Dog

Sometimes when training our dogs, less is more. Less talk that is. We talk to our dogs A LOT. We tell them how adorable they are, how good they are, and we tell them what they aren't doing correctly more often than not. When it comes to problem solving, concentration with little background noise is best initially. Overtime we want to work on proofing behaviors as the distractions increase. When our dogs are learning it is important to try and keep quiet.

That being said, when you like what your dog has done let him know. A smile, an exuberant "Good Dog!" and a treat will communicate that to your dog. Those type of acknowledgments can be lost on our dog if we are constantly talking to them. "Sit, sit, sit down Fido, why aren't you listening, sit, si..."Good Dog", stay, stay, no sit, sit sit..." You get the picture. If you are quiet and patient, and give your dog a chance to respond you will likely see a decrease in stress and a higher rate of attention.

 

Shaping is using a series of small steps to achieve a final behavior. It is done without manipulating the dog in any way whether with physical corrections, voice commands or pointing. Shaping encourages the dog to make decisions and we get to watch and mark the right decisions. Think of it as playing the childhood hiding game, "Hot and Cold". As you get closer to the hidden item you keep getting reinforced by a verbal marker hot, hot, hotter, or if you are steering off on the wrong course you hear cold. With shaping, the equivalent to being "hot" is the sound of the clicker and a treat. The absence of a click is the indicator to the dog that he is cold. The more clicks he gets, the more correct decisions he is making towards the final behavior. You want to keep your body still and quiet so that your dog makes all the decisions.

Below are two videos. One is me shaping Henry to put his feet in the laundry basket. Henry is pretty new to shaping and takes longer to think things through. The second video is to show the difference between dogs who have done a lot of shaping to those that haven't and is of my older dog Scout, also being shaped to put his feet in the basket. Take notice that in both videos I'm overall quite still and I don't talk to the dogs at all except when they make a breakthrough towards the final behavior.