How to train the dog?

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When I was a child, I had a puppy named "poppy". One of her favorite play was catch ball. But the problem was when she caught the ball with her mouth, because she didn't want to set a ball free and persistently biting it. Every time I played with my puppy, I had to take a ball away from her mouth by force, and it was really tough work.

Now, as a college student, I learned how to train the dog with the positive reinforcement. If I knew this before, my puppy and I would have a more fun play.
Positive reinforcement is presentation of a stimulus that strengthens the probability of the behavior. With treats and praise, it is easy to train the dog. Importance thing to remember is the shaping behavior. If the teaching certain behaviors takes some time, reinforcing something close to the desired technique then gradually requiring more to achieve the final technique.

One of the dog trick that I wanted to train my puppy was "Play Dead" This fascinating trick can be trained easily with positive reinforcement. To train this trick with the shaping behavior, initially reward dog for lie-down, then for staying motionless.

To find out more information about positive reinforcement training, click here.

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First of all, let me just say that video is super adorable! My little sister got a puppy almost a year ago, and it is interesting to see how they are training him. First of all, they have been teaching him tricks like shake, roll over, play dead, etc, and they give Sebastian a treat every time he does it correctly. However, according to the textbook, partial reinforcement is better in the long-term than constant positive reinforcement, so I'm wondering if it would be better for them to only give him a treat sometimes. Also, he's started going to manners school, and the trainer recommended that we get him a choke collar. Do the negative side effects of punishment only affect humans, or are choke collars not a good idea to use on animals?

This is cute video. I also have a similar experience that it would have been more fun if I knew how to train my dog using positive reinforcement. One episode from the comedy drama, "Bing Bang Theory", dealt with positive reinforcement. A guy tried to train his girl friend using positive reinforcement; whenever his girl friend showed "good behavior", he gave her chocolate. Do you think it is possible to train an adult using positive reinforcement?

That video makes me miss my puppies so much! It is so adorable! But this blog reminded me of a show on Animal Planet called "It's Me or the Dog." This British woman named Victoria trains/fixes unruly dog behavior like pulling on the leash or stealing food from the counter tops. She uses the popular clicker method that we talked about in lectures. Every time the dog did something right she would click the clicker and give it a treat. I never really understood how they would learn so fast but now I have learned it's positive reinforcement. With dogs being as smart as they are do you think the training on the show could become extinct?

The dog trainer in me has to respond! :) Yes partial reinforcement is the best method to maintain high rates of behavior. Initially all behaviors should be trained using continuous reinforcement but then the behavior should be shifted to a partial reinforcement schedule. The negative effects of punishment absolutely apply to animals as well as people (sometimes more so). I have trained my dogs using entirely positive reinforcement very successfully (with previous dogs I did use positive punishment like choke chains but found that they are not necessary). I would recommend you have your family go to one of the many positive reinforcement schools in the area (talk to me after class sometime and I would be happy to recommend one!).

Good example of positive reinforcement and shaping in animals.

This is a great example of reinforcement. We are constantly reading about these examples in our book, but it's interesting to see that you actually used it on your own dog and experienced success. There is lot's to be learned in the dog-training world, by getting a feel for positive reinforcement.

In Big Bang Theory, Sheldon starts using positive reinforcement 9usually chocolate) to get people to behave a certain way. This type of reinforcement can actually be used on people though. When you think about parents trying to raise young children it's exactly the same situation. They can either reward their child for good behaviors, and stay strong about stopping bad behaviors, or they can cave in to their child's bad behaviors and accidentally reinforce those. For example, if a child is having a tantrum in a grocery store because they want candy, the parent could either say no, and/or scold them for having a tantrum, letting them know it's wrong, or they could give their child the candy and let the child know having a tantrum=getting their way. It's an interesting concept.

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This page contains a single entry by park0954 published on February 26, 2012 11:54 PM.

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