Positive Reinforcement How Hard Can It Be?

All the dogs love to go for a walk and we try to go every day or at least 5 times a week minimum. Sybil loves to get her harness on, she LOVES to get in the car and practically leaps in her crate from our arms when the door is opened. She gets vocal when we turn down the road that goes to the place we park to get out and walk and she is just beside herself with anticipation when the car stops and we get out to leash up everyone and get going. All good right? Right!

 When we walk out on the trails we use retractable leashes so the foster dogs can have some autonomy for sniffing and peeing etc. Sybil likes to mark, she can squat, mark and catch up to me in no time flat and we can continue motoring at a nice pace. Timken is usually on leash with Dave I have Sybil on leash with me. Many times what has happened is all of a sudden Sybil stops in her tracks and plants her feet and will not budge! I have tried calling her to me, picking her up and carrying her part way then putting her back down which works temporarily, before we are back to square one. I have waited...and waited...and waited, which sometimes works but not always. I have circled back around and gotten her to go the opposite way then balk! Dave has carried her part way and that works for a bit then balk! Once she gets going again she is usually good to go for the rest of the walk but this balking could be tough when we are on a time schedule and it is freezing and or raining out and we need to get walking and warmed up!

Sybil on her first walk with us, she was very curious about this new place.

All my foster parent friends are yelling about now "luring and positive reinforcment!!!!, get some treats and lure her into walking!!!!!!! for goodness sakes!" LOL Well that IS one of the things I had been working on BUT sometimes it takes some trial and error to reinforce the correct behavior.

I started by holding the treat and Sybil would come running to me to get it, "yes" I would chant and offer the treat which she would devour walk a little further then BALK! I would get up ahead turn around offer the treat, she would run up "yes" I would say, go a little further, BALK! Well this wasn't working very well.

OK regroup. Palm hits forehead, I am reinforcing her to stand on all fours not walking then coming when I call. Why wouldn't she do this over and over???? (This is called "the chain" and I will explain this in another blog post in the future)

Back to the drawing board for foster mom. My next attempt went like this; make sure to offer the treat when she is actually walking. As she is walking I give the treat, she grabs it and continues along, she goes on ahead then circles back still walking to get another treat, I give her one "yes" I say repeat and so on. Now I have reinforced her to walk along without balking but to constantly come back to me for treats. Not quite what I had in mind either.

Sybil motoring the other day...always nose to the ground for her. (Note: it looks like Tim is off-leash in the back ground, he isn't, it is just a weird picture :)

Third try is a charm. OK back to the drawing board and think this through. My new method is to reinforce Sybil with a yummy treat when she is walking along, moving forward, and not asking me for the treat. Bingo! This works great! She still circles around to check on me to see if I have a treat for her, I tell her she is a doing good and then I say "let's go!" and she runs up and continues on her sniffing and walking, then when she least expects it and she is motoring along really nicely, "yes!", I say, and treat.

We are going longer and longer in between treats and we had a really really great walk today. We all moved at a good pace which gave us, and most importantly, the pack of terriers the exercise we all needed.

So here's the thing...yes initially I reinforced the wrong behavior which caused some confusion for poor Sybil, but the reality is she wasn't harmed in any way, she just didn't know exactly what I was asking for. Lucky for me Sybil is forgiving and really wants to learn what I am asking. Had we been using punishment or alpha training or some kind of yanking or choke chains that would have only made the walks scary for her, she wouldn't trust us, and it still wouldn't have gotten us the results we were looking for which is to go for a walk and to keep moving. Working with positive reinforcement isn't hard at all, it does require us who aren't professional dog trainers to think about what we want and how to efficiently and with the least amount of confusion relay that to our furry companions. The great thing about dogs and this training method is that even when we are reinforcing the wrong thing they are still having fun! Because they are getting rewarded and aren't getting reprimanded by the human for doing the wrong thing the dog can just keep at it until the human figures out how to get the behavior we are actually looking for. It is a win-win! Now I know what I need to reinforce and I will just keep up with this and we can all continue to have happy, motoring, walks.

A good long walk makes for a relaxed content little girl.