Reinforcing Positive Behavior

When you hear the phrase “reinforcing positive behavior” it sounds rather scientific and vague, but it’s actually something you probably do with your dog everyday. If your dog brings you a ball and you throw it for him you have reinforced positive behavior (unless you hate to play ball with your dog). Your dog has brought you his ball (positive behavior) and you have reinforced it by throwing the ball for him (the reward). You can frame many of your dog’s behaviors in this way and it becomes easy to see how you can train your dog to do things without resorting to punishment.

Reinforcing positive behavior is a very popular training method because it accentuates and rewards the positive things that a dog does. Whether you use a clicker to mark the desired behavior or something else, reinforcing positive behavior depends on the dog’s own behavior. When the dog does something that you desire him to do you should let him know, in some way, that’s the desired behavior. Many people use the clicker to “mark” the particular moment when the dog does the right thing, but you can use anything you like that the dog will understand. Once the dog does what you want him to do, even by accident, and you have “marked” the behavior in some way, you give your dog a reward. You repeat the exercise with the command. After doing this a few times the dog knows exactly why he is being rewarded and repeats the desired behavior himself.

One of the interesting things about reinforcing positive behavior, especially with using a clicker, is that the dog begins to associate the clicker with learning. After learning a few things by means of the clicker he knows, when you click something for a new exercise, that you’re asking him to learn something, so he begins to try to figure out what it is you want him to do. He learns faster and faster.

Reinforcing positive behavior is part of what is called “operant conditioning.” Operant conditioning was a theory of B.F. Skinner’s, but it was applied to animals and developed by Marian and Keller Breland for work with dolphins in the 1940-60s. Virtually any domestic animal can be (and has been) trained using clicker training and positive reinforcement.

Prior to using positive reinforcement most dog training relied on correction and punishment. This method is still taught in some places and in some obedience classes. Some dogs respond better than others to this old method – and some do not learn well at all with this approach. Another approach to dog training is the so-called “dog whispering” style of training in which the owner is supposedly the “alpha” of the dog’s pack. This method has been largely discredited by canine behaviorists. According to one source humans are not members of a dog’s pack. We’re more like gods to our dogs. So, to have a human treat a dog roughly, like another dog in a pack, is a traumatic experience for a dog and can destroy our relationship with them.