This is the first in a series I will write to help dog owners better understand how to teach their dogs skills and how to change behaviour.  When you have a decent foundation in learning theory it makes a huge difference because you can start to understand HOW and WHY things do and don’t work.

There are several ways dogs (and humans and other animals for that matter) learn.  The first one we will look at is Operant Conditioning which is made up of Positive Reinforcement (R+), Positive Punishment (P+), Negative Reinforcement (R-) and Negative Punishment (P-).

Positive Reinforcement (R+) is first up as that’s usually the easiest to understand.

With Operant Conditioning, Positive has a very specific meaning - simply that something is added.  It’s not a value judgement, it just means something is added.

Reinforcement has a very specific meaning - it’s something that increases the chances of the behaviour being repeated.

So Positive Reinforcement is when something is ADDED to make the behaviour MORE likely to happen again.  Operant conditioning is very “clinical” in that it’s defined by its outcome.

Of course, the thing that’s added must be something the dog likes, otherwise the behaviour wouldn’t be repeated.

We also have the ABC of learning, with A being the Antecedent, B being the Behaviour and C being the Consequence.

Antecedent is what happens immediately before the behaviour - eg we say “sit”.

Behaviour is the action the dog does - eg puts their bottom on the ground.

Consequence is what happens now - dog gets a treat.

For this to pass as Positive Reinforcement, the sitting behaviour must happen more often when we say sit; the treat is added after the behaviour to make it more likely to happen.  If the dog doesn’t sit more often when we say sit and they get a treat, it’s not R+, we’re just giving the dog treats. 

Now I’m all for giving dogs treats for free, that’s totally fine, however in a training context we must ensure we’re using the food to increase the desired behaviour, otherwise people can fall into a trap.  It’s not uncommon for people to “believe” Positive Reinforcement doesn’t work, however as you can see, that’s not a valid statement because if it didn’t work it wasn’t Positive Reinforcement!

There’s always a reason why things don’t work but that’s a problem with the application of the training (ie owner/trainer error).  I think there are a lot of misunderstandings about how food is used in training, well I KNOW there are, not I THINK there are (I was trying to be diplomatic there for a moment)!!  If someone is limited by their understanding of how learning happens, they will be limited in how they apply that incomplete knowledge.  And therein lies the problem.

Positive Reinforcement is quick and easy for teaching new skills; the best thing (apart from it being good for dogs) is once you’ve started teaching some basic things, everything else you want to teach becomes so much easier as you understand HOW and WHY learning happens.

Next up will be Positive Punishment .................