Education: rewarding your dog
Most dog trainers will tell you that there is nothing better than a reward for training your dog. It can take different forms and its use in learning is positive reinforcement.
Rewarding your dog is reinforcing and praising the actions you want him to repeat. Rewards in training are essential if the owner/dog relationship is to be based on the concept of cooperation rather than coercion.
Why reward instead of punish your dog?
Rewarding your dog instead of punishing him means reinforcing good behavior, which causes the dog to breed them again for satisfaction. A dog is an opportunistic animal and will go in the direction it wishes. Therefore, rewarding him for his good deeds is a completely natural and effective way to communicate with him and have a balanced long-term relationship.
Instead, in many cases, punishing a dog means adding something unpleasant to it so that it eventually avoids this or that behavior. We therefore start with an education based on avoidance and fear: this is clearly not a solution for respecting animal welfare.
However, even choosing to educate your dog in a positive way, there is a penalty, but it will lead to more behaviors that make the dog recoil and make him realize that he will not be satisfied with this or that kind of behavior.
Of course, we must remember that it is always more effective and benevolent to reinforce good behavior than to punish bad behavior.
Therefore, rewarding your dog helps:
- Strengthens the interspecific relationship between owner and dog
- Inspire animals to cooperate
- Give the dog confidence in himself and in his master
What reward for his dog?
Rewarding your dog means building a positive bond after the proposed action. However, it is important that the association is truly positive for your animal.
In fact, the reward could be for dog X, but certainly not for dog Y. We must therefore learn to observe and decipher the signals that the dog sends after the reward.
For example, some dogs are completely uncomfortable being petted. So we wanted to congratulate him by touching him, instead we sent him a mixed message. If we like him standing up again, maybe he won't come back with the same enthusiasm in the future for "fear" of being stroked.
Indeed, if your dog yawns, licks his nose, turns his head, or even growls, you know that the chosen reward does not correspond to his wishes and expectations.
But fortunately, petting is far from the only reward offered to your dog. In fact, you can choose from several solutions:
Verbal rewards: This involves exaggerating the intonation of the voice and adding treble to clearly distinguish the reward from the classic verbal command.
Play Reward: For example, this wouldn't be the first choice for a dog that struggles to channel its energy during working hours, but it's a nice reward at the end of the exercise.
Petting rewards: Of course, if your dog likes petting, you can pet him, but be careful not to pet him too often or the petting will lose value when you really want to reward him for his good deeds.
Food rewards: When you want to warmly praise your dog, the main reward that comes to mind is the treat. But be careful not to give your dog treats to avoid any health or overweight problems.
Simple fact of acquisition: Sometimes rewarding your dog just gets him what he originally wanted. The most telling example is the front door: If your dog scratches or barks at the door to get out, wait until he calms down before opening the door for him. So you praise your dog for calming down by allowing him to accept his initial request.
How to reward your dog?
Finally, to properly reward your dog, you cannot reward him "for free", in which case the reward will lose its value. You should therefore reward only the good behaviors that you want your dog to reproduce.
Also, the timing of the rewards will be very important! Indeed, the dog lives in the moment, there is no question of rewarding it 2 hours later after the action has been carried out. Because he just doesn't understand why he gets the reward, so you reward your dog for free.
Always in this temporal logic, it is necessary to be precise in the reinforcement of behaviors, and not to reinforce bad attitudes without knowing it. This is often a mistake we make, especially when we teach the dog to sit, eg we let him sit, we are happy when he sits, but our enthusiasm makes us get up, even jump on it, and we still continue to reward it. Here we don't reward him for sitting down, we reward him for getting up and jumping on us.
In summary, what to remember is:
- Rewards reinforce good behavior
- Instead of pointing out and punishing bad behavior, reinforce good behavior
- You need to find a dog-friendly reward
- Too many "free" rewards, kill the rewards
- Good timing will be the key to success.