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Wednesday, 4 July 2012

Are you teaching your dog bad habits?

By Arthur Smith


It is easy to teach your dog the habits that drive you loony. This is performed by something by the name of reinforcement. Good dog trainers have learned to channel this strengthening in a good fashion to prompt repeat behaviour. By brooding about how you react when your dog is doing something unhelpful you may be surprised to learn you are actually keeping up the habit that you want to see stop.

To gain a knowledge of re-strengthening you've first got to notice that your dog interprets reward differently to the way us humans do. Attention is among the main rewarding factors to your dog. This attention can be, in your eyes, positive or negative, it gives a reward.

A real instance of this is the unruly family dog. All dogs need attention from their owners. They love us and want to know that we feel the same way. Sadly a dog that's ignored most of the time and only spoken to when he is being a bother is, in his eyes rewarded for doing something unhelpful. So he'll repeat the behavior so as to repeat the reward. It's not important if he is shouted at or punished, because in his eyes, negative attention is far better than none at all.

A standard issue with pet dogs is jumping up at people. This behavior nearly guarantees the reward of attention. People instantly touch a dog that jumps up, and regularly speak to him. Right away the attention has been braced. Jumping up works, next time he wishes attention the dog will jump up again.

To shape a nicely behaved dog you should reward good behaviour, show your dog that it's worth repeating. Give him the attention that he wants by carrying out some relaxed and fun sessions. You can begin to learn to reinforce behavior by training the dog to do tricks. Research how to teach a dog to play dead. It will be a great learning experience for you both. You'll learn timing and positive reinforcement from teaching this trick.




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