Why do you bang on about rewards? Why we use rewards and all that good stuff.

I replied to a comment about puppy training on Nextdoor – the social media platform that is basically lost cats and casual racism. I got a reply from a local balanced trainer telling me to stop banging on about rewards, and that positive reinforcement was for snowflake hippies. All good trainers (or you know, hippies) use rewards – or as we call it positive reinforcement. Our industry can be really harsh on clients and trainers that don’t. So what is positive reinforcement, where does it come from, and why does this liberal, leftie, snowflake, hippy use it!

Pack Theory So before reward-based training, we all used to believe in something called pack theory.

The idea was that wolves had an alpha male and female, they controlled all the resources, and other wolves would want that top spot so would battle to get it. We saw it in wolves, dogs used to be wolves, bobs your uncle everything a dog does ‘wrong’ is because it is trying to be dominant.

Slight problem, dogs stopped being wolves a really long time ago, and there aren’t even alphas in wolves. Yup, they work as a family. Your dog doesn’t think you are a dog, and they aren’t trying to dominate you. You control nearly everything in your dog's life, food, walks, play etc - their day to day life effectively depends on you. Your dog knows this. But they are also a dog – they literally have no concept of ‘a master’.

So, err, how do dogs learn

Dogs learn all the time. If the dog does something, and the outcome is good, they do it again. If the outcome is bad, they don’t do it. If you are a science geek like me, we trainers spend a ton of time studying and implementing certain bits of learning theory, go read up on classical and operant conditioning if you are interested.

What are positive vs balanced vs other training?

Generally, us trainers fall into 3 categories:

Positive: All qualified and accredited training use reward-based techniques. In short, the dog does something we want, we reward, the dog does something we don’t, we ignore. Would you go to work for free? No! So why should our dogs? Balanced: Use some reward, some ignoring, some punishment.

Punishment: As it sounds on the tin, if the dog does something we don’t like, we punish them. So tapping the dog's nose, rubbing their nose in their poo, shock collars, anti-bark collars. Think Ceaser Milan – who can quite frankly get in the bin!

(Side note: a lot of trainers say they only use positive reinforcement (the operant meaning) but surely withholding rewards or walking away is negative punishment…okay I'm being pedantic here.)

What does science say? There have been a few studies on training methods – some scientifically sound, some just okay. The overall consensus is positive reinforcement works better, and punishment techniques are either unnecessary, less effective or result in worse behaviours. I've included studies at the bottom, so you can look at them yourself, and make your own judgement. We aren't denying punishment based techniques can work. For some behaviours, they can work, but importantly they don't work as well and can have nasty consequences.

My View I train positively. But for me, it’s an ethical decision. If I can train my dog in a way that promotes a great bond between us, makes us both happy, and results in a dog (and cat) who wants to train and learn with me then why would I do anything else? To me – ecollars, shouting at your dog, all of that nonsense just results in a dog who doesn’t like me that much. Yes, I am going to have the pets on the sofa because they are the only living things I know who are willing to watch The Bachelor with me.

If I use food- my dog will get fat Yes. If we always rewarded sit with a treat, you would have a Corgi who resembled a sheep instead of a sheepherder. Good trainers will teach you how to reduce rewards. Secondly, rewards don’t mean food! There are loads of different rewards you can use:

Food Use some of their dinner, treats (cut into bits), cheese, chicken, literally any safe food.

Funk up the food! Don’t just give it to them, throw it for a catch, bowl it along the grass, or hide it in a bush.

Play. Play is a great reward – your dog does something good whip out a toy

Environment. Your dog likes swimming – that’s a reward, they like sniffing a lamppost- that’s a reward too.

Social. Whoop, cheer and cuddle your dog. If your dog loves you, good, you are a reward. For me, playing with other dogs is something most pups love, so absolutely I am going to use that as a reward.

Others. Literally everything else your dog likes can be used as a reward.

Go write a list of everything your dog loves, and rank them low, medium, and high. The easy task gets a low-value reward. Hard tasks get the good stuff!

But if my dog doesn’t listen to me, I should tell them off. Right, so this is an argument we hear a lot. Think recall- dog runs off, you try to call them, they don’t listen, you end up on youtube shouting FENTONNNN. We’ve all been there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GRSbr0EYYU

A lot of people will tell their dog off for not coming back and will shout at them when their pooch eventually waddles back to them. The thing is – we shout at the dog when they get back to us – so all the dog learns is that coming back to my owner means I will get shouted at so I am not gonna do that again.

Dog doesn’t come back, you're stood in the rain, you're cold, and you are now late for a meeting. Perfectly rational to me to feel irritated by this. The solution, say whatever you want to your dog, but in a positive voice. Do your best impression of yours truly (think high pitched Midlands mickey mouse) as you let your frustration out. Fine by me if you say “I should have got a cat and now you smell like wet dog” as long as you have a happy face, and happy body, your dog will still see this as a positive. The amazing Grisha Stewart educated people on this.

But, my dog knows they have done wrong – they look guilty. We’ve all seen those YouTube videos where the owner comes home from work, the dog looks guilty, and the content of the sofa is now all over the house. The issue is your dog did their best bull in a china shop impression hours ago. If you come home from work, see the destruction and tell your dog off, the dog will not associate the shouting with something that happened hours ago. All that happens is your dog learns when my owners come home they shout at me, and I don’t like that. The body language and facial expressions we read as guilty, are actually a scared dog trying to stop you from shouting at them. Sad right?

Side note for pet pros, Lisa Feldmans Barrett's theory on constructed emotions has taken off in the dog world – it suggests dogs feel affect over emotions. I will do a blog on it soon, I promise. Interesting stuff though!

Pumpkin 101 – why positive reinforcement rocks!

This is Pumpkin who came from our local RSPCA. She now belongs to my mum. She is a…errr…chihuahua x terrier.. honestly your guess is as good as mine. When we took Pumps (it's her nickname) out for a walk- she would bark and growl at every dog- it was clear she was terrified of them. Imagine if I had punished that behaviour- so pulled on her collar and shouted 'no' every time she growled at another dog, or heaven forbid put an ecollar on her - Pumps would learn she can't growl at other dogs, but would still be terrified of them

So the next time we meet another dog what options does she have? She can't bark and she can't growl, so biting is her only option. We could have made everything worse. So instead we did a lot of positive training. We introduced fun enrichment to boost her mood, made sure she trusted us, and then used positive techniques to change her view of food. In short, she saw a dog, we shouted “treaticles” she got chicken, and over time she learned dogs are okay actually.

Side note: my mum says “treaticles” instead of treats, I chuckled every time she said it. Classical conditioning occurred resulting in me saying “treaticles” in front of a large class. My team laughed. A lot. They still do. Jokes on them when they say it too!

Should we be annoyed at people who use aversives? As an industry, we are really vocal about the use of positive reinforcement. But I do think it is important that we approach aversive trainers and owners with compassion. For owners, there is still ALOT of really bad information out there on tv, films and google about how to train your dog using pack theory or punishment. Is it a surprise they use these methods? Answer me this, did you at one point believe pack theory because I did!

As positive reinforcement trainers, we should be saying, so you used a shock collar and it didn’t work, okay (deep breath), how about we try this method instead? Your dog is doing these behaviours because they feel like this, and we want them to feel like this, and this is how we are going to do it together. Just be kind. For professionals, again, can we guide them to the studies on positive reinforcement, can we show them the amazing charismatic force-free trainer we have. Give them a chance? If then they don’t listen, well then I hope their tea is forever cold. Are we going to change the industry by arguing with other trainers? NO! Can we change by putting on amazing classes, and showing our techniques work on social media, yes we can!

Conclusion

Okay, this blog post was a lot. In short, science suggests positive is best, we should also use it because we are kind, dogs aren’t wolves and Pumpkin is the best. Whether we are training, our cats, dogs or pigs, using rewards is best. That’s all from me you will be pleased to hear. I am now off to add hippy-snowflake to my linked-in profile.

Studies:

• Fernandes et al 2017 have a good little review paper of researchers up to 2017, suggesting positive is better but studies could be better

• Castro et all 2020 showed aversive (punishment) techniques result in a more stressed dog, saying this is bad for welfare.

• Dinewoodie, et all 2021 anti bark collars no effective

• China et all 2020 says E:collar use unnecessary

• ·Caset et al say dogs who undergo two or more aversive methods are more pesimistic

References

• China, L., Mills, D. and Cooper, J., 2020. Efficacy of Dog Training With and Without Remote Electronic Collars vs. a Focus on Positive Reinforcement. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 7.

• Dinwoodie, I., Zottola, V. and Dodman, N., 2021. An investigation into the effectiveness of various professionals and behavior modification programs, with or without medication, for the treatment of canine aggression. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 43, pp.46-53.

• Guilherme Fernandes, J., Olsson, I. and Vieira de Castro, A., 2017. Do aversive-based training methods actually compromise dog welfare?: A literature review. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 196, pp.1-12.

• Vieira de Castro, A., Fuchs, D., Morello, G., Pastur, S., de Sousa, L. and Olsson, I., 2020. Does training method matter? Evidence for the negative impact of aversive-based methods on companion dog welfare. PLOS ONE, 15(12), p.e0225023.

• https://kb.rspca.org.au/knowledge-base/what-is-the-rspcas-view-on-dominance-dog-training/

• https://positively.com/dog-training/myths-truths/pack-theory-debunked/

• https://apdt.com/resource-center/dominance-and-dog-training/