Reward Procedures

What is a reward procedure?

We’ve been focusing on reinforcement and there is still so much more to say. It isn’t surprising that we need to spend a lot of time here finessing our practice. Since reinforcement build behaviour, and we are in the business of building behaviour, understanding this aspect and using every ounce of it to our advantage is extremely important.

Reinforcement procedures are the various ways we teach our dogs to access reinforcement. These behaviours need to be taught as a separate skill to fluency before we can use them inside our training. So these skills are among the first things I teach my dogs. As an added bonus this training helps my dogs learn that verbals matte. They learn to listen carefully to verbals from a very young age.

Food Reward Procedures:

At the moment I have a few reward procedures around food. My dog might access food by approaching and taking it from my hand or by picking a tossed treat up off the floor. I could also get her to wait for food to be brought to her. I could also send her to a dish to access food. Personally, I put each of these on a different verbal cue and so I can instruct my dog which reinforcement procedure is currently paying.

Toy Reward Procedures:

I personally don’t have a lot of toy procedures as compared to some, but I do have three I use regularly, retrieve a thrown toy, retrieve a remote toy (sitting on the ground) and tug a toy in my hand. Unlike with food, I have not yet added different verbal cues too each of these behaviours, instead I rely on the environment to provide a layer of cueing for me, however people who do train these of different verbals seem to really think it is supportive of the dog’s learning.

Other Reward Procedures:

Why just stop at food and toys when there is a big wide world out there? Often times people get into trouble because they don’t recognize the reinforcers their dog is accessing when they are hanging out at home or out and about around town. They inadvertently reward behaviours that they actually dislike. Access has immense reinforcement value for our dogs. In the case of the real world, access could be to a smell, a person or another dog. This access could even be to water to swim in, an area for running or access to being able to see something of interest. At home, access could be to a desired location, like outside, or the bed. It could even be access to touching, chasing you or other training.

Capitalizing of Other Rewards:

The problem isn’t in the existence of these other rewards, rather it is in learning to capitalize on them. They are out there in the environment rewarding our dogs regardless, so the question is more, how do we ensure that they are rewarding behaviour we like rather than behaviour we don’t. One way to do this is to ask for a hand touch and then send your dog on a cue to the distraction. examples of these cues are: “go see”, “say hi” or “go sniff” to that which interests them. I’m sure there is enough in this section for a blog post on each one on its own, but we can come back to that later.

So that is definitely a long list of reinforcers we can use to help us be better dog trainers. So many folks limit their training to just food and miss a lot of other opportunities out there. 

Which reinforcement strategies do you use frequently? Which new ones are you hoping to include? Let me know in the comments.