A Real Man is willing to make a deal and pay a decent wage.
Some people have a real problem about training with food.
When I say a real problem, I mean a real problem. To read some of the stuff I have seen online and hear what I have heard in person, I half expect “training dogs with treats” to show up on National Geographic Channel’s Taboo series. (Another fine example of the high-quality programming that disgraces the name of the once great National Geographic Society.)
Tradition has it that dogs should “want to please,” work for us out of “loyalty,” or magically find “good boy” and a pat on the head inherently rewarding. And this tradition can seem pretty reasonable and effective at times. Many dogs are remarkably biddable and will do a lot for a pat on the head, or more accurately, because they find many of the things we want them to do inherently reinforcing.
Let me oversimplify things for a moment:
Organisms do things because they are reinforcing — they are rewarding. (They do things for other reasons, but I am oversimplifying here.) Some things are inherently reinforcing: food, water, and sex, are examples of inherent or primary reinforcers. Other things are conditioned or secondary reinforcers: money, toys, and clickers.
One thing that frequently confuses people is the difference between a reinforcer and a bribe. A bi-weekly paycheck deposited to your bank is not a bribe, it’s a reinforcer. In return for you doing your job, you are paid. If your boss was waiting for you in the office every morning and waved 10% of your paycheck in front of you, it would cheapen your relationship. You would be insulted. It would feel like a bribe.
We use food to make a similar arrangement with our dogs. By using food we communicate with them about the behaviors we want them to learn and then do for us. If we are doing it right, it is a reinforcer — a reward — and never a bribe.
Does this diminish our relationship with our dogs? Not unless you look down on everyone that you interact with. Does paying your doctor make you respect him less? Does your boss look down on you because you work for money? (If so, are you looking for another job yet?) Are your transactions with your barber, landscaper, and mechanic, somehow diminished when money changes hands? Of course not. A real man is willing to pony up with honest pay for honest work.
Of course money isn’t the only reinforcer for us. Your friends are your friends because you find each other’s company reinforcing. You read the books you do because they are reinforcing. You watch the movies you watch because they are reinforcing. Naturally, what you find reinforcing may not be what I do. I might not like your friends, enjoy books, or want to go see Twilight with you. Real men understand the differences between what motivates one person or another.
Food isn’t the only reinforcer for dogs either. The main reason trainers use food is because it is a primary reinforcer. If you need a portable, easy to find, and easy to handle (for the most part) reinforcer that 8 new dogs in a new class will respond to, food is the first item on the list. Food is the “greatest common denominator” of reinforcers. A good trainer will show you how to use other reinforcers (play is a favorite of mine) early on in the training process and keep reminding you to slip it in when possible.
So what about that praise and pat on the head? Shouldn’t it be enough? Are they primary reinforcers? Not in any book I have read. A well-socialized and behaviorally sound dog generally enjoys being around people and will respond positively to attention, but that does not mean that a pat on the head is automatically reinforcing. As a matter of fact, some dogs don’t even want to be touched when they are working.
We use food to introduce a new behavior to a dog. We can’t explain to dogs why we want them to lie on their mats when the doorbell rings with human language. Later on we only reward them for doing so periodically because they don’t need to be paid every time, but expecting them to do it for free every time isn’t fair either. Honest pay for honest work.
We use food to get our dogs to climb the A-frame in agility. Later on they might do it because it is fun. It’s up to them to decide.
A real man is willing to make this kind of deal with his dog: do what I ask and you will be rewarded. He doesn’t expect a dog, or any other creature, to do anything for him out of blind devotion, nor is he willing to constantly bribe, cajole and entice. Somewhere there is a happy medium and he is willing to meet others halfway.
Yeah, the real man in my house can tend toward the “she should do it just because I said so” school. (I talk about this here: http://somethingwagging.wordpress.com/2010/05/0…).
I've been thinking about motivation since I read Daniel Pink's new book, Drive. He says that when humans do rote tasks, they will perform better for simple motivators, like money. But, when we do things that involve more creativity, money isn't enough to motivate us and can even inhibit our performance. What's truly motivating to humans in creative work is autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
I wonder if there is something comparable for dogs. They may need different kind of reinforcers depending on what they're doing and how they feel about it. As you say, food is a good place to start but as we learn more about our dogs, we can find all kinds of other motivators.
I think there is a corollary for that with dogs. Work that engages innate behaviors like chase, fetch, tug etc. seem to be much more rewarding that working for food….
I think there is a corollary for that with dogs. Work that engages innate behaviors like chase, fetch, tug etc. seem to be much more rewarding that working for food….
Loving the ‘real man’ series!
BTW- my quick and easy answer to student questions on the “list of reinforcers” in class. Primary reinforcers= food, shelter, sex. I don’t have time to build your dog a tent, most dogs like food, and if you want to try sex you’re on your own.
They get it after that :-}
Ha! Nice way to get the message across!
oh, and just an aside on the above comments. yes, reinforcement is an interesting in depth subject, certainly not black and white.
but i would argue that chase, tug and fetch, in fact most dog play, are all based on “prey drive” . which, let’s not forget, is food aquisition. which is linked back to primary reinforcers…. so those are not instead of food, they are conditioned by their proximity to food on that wacky reinforcement continuum!
thinking those mad humpers are also trying to get some reinforcement somewhere in life, LOL ;}