rewards

Rewarding Your Dog

Submitted by wabniaq-k9 on Mon, 11/12/2018 - 19:51

Sometimes (a lot of times) when people bring their dog for training it's because the dog is not doing what the human wants.

Does the dog understand the desired behavior? Is the dog able to produce the desired behavior? Can the dog associate the behavior with the command? Does the desired behavior earn a better reward than other options?

If you were offered a job that payed better, payed more often, had better working conditions, greater chances for success, and more interesting and meaningful work, wouldn't you take it? And what if you were paid in cash?

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The Problem With Bribes

Submitted by wabniaq-k9 on Mon, 10/01/2018 - 12:48

 In the context of dog training, the difference between a bribe and a reward is that with a bribe, the payment comes before the behavior, with a reward, the payment comes after the behavior. With a certain amount of levity I have elsewhere suggested that we don’t bribe dogs for the same reason we don’t bribe people – because then they own you. On a more serious note, bribing a dog as a management technique can have genuinely terrible consequences.

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