Science and Animal Training Series #4: Science-based Dog Training Matters
The big picture of dog training There’s a big picture of dog training, and it involves how we treat animals and humans. Positive reinforcement can help us get others to respond in ways we like. It requires us to observe our own behavior and choose what we do so we can get the responses we […]
Science and Animal Training #3: Behavior Science Principles
The application of behavior science is based on the behavior science principles of Stimulation, Reinforcement, Extinction, Punishment, and Generalization. Anyone who has a dog uses these principles every day, but you may not realize the power you have to use them deliberately. Stimulation or The Stimulus Stimulation is giving a cue. The stimulus is whatever […]
Science and Animal Training #2: Do I have to be a science geek to learn to train dogs?
You can be whomever you want! There’s an advantage to enjoying reading about the topic of behavior science. You don’t have to read the cold, dry language of scientific studies, but it’s helpful to choose books and articles that include references you can check. You have to be objective and you have to ask questions, […]
Science and Animal Training Series #1: What is Science-based Training?
Training “Training” most often refers to changing the behavior of an organism. The organism may be your dog or cat, horse or parrot, fish, lizard, or a human family member. The behavior may be your dog learning to retrieve a ball, a lizard going to a certain area of his cage, or your nephew learning […]
Teaching Reactive Dogs A New Habit, Part II: “Look At That!” for reactivity
What is Reactivity? “Reactivity” in dogs describes a dog reacting quickly and intensively to stimuli that don’t warrant such a strong response. It’s a problem behavior that can be prevented and treated with a few simple exercises. Dogs that respond quickly to certain stimuli are often trained as hearing alert dogs; these dogs don’t miss […]
The Trading Protocol for Prevention and Treatment of Resource Guarding in Dogs
Resource Guarding is a perfectly natural behavior for dogs. It can serve a valuable purpose if they are feral, living on their own, and having to find and protect food, sleeping areas, their puppies, and themselves from harm. The dogs we live with and the dogs we rescue have no need to guard their resources, […]
B. F. Skinner on How To Teach Animals
Teaching, it is often said, is an art, but we have increasing reason to hope that it may eventually become a science. We have already discovered enough about the nature of learning to devise training techniques which are much more rapid and give more reliable results than the rule-of-thumb methods of the past. Tested on […]
