A few months ago I decided I needed to build some value for the weaves. Meisje has always struggled with the weaves. For her they are effort. It took me a long time to teach the weaves, WAY longer than it should have so that effort is both physical and mental.
When Meisje is in a tugging mood, the tug gets me great weaves, but I never know when tugging is going to lose its value for her, so one day I decided to cut one hot dog into 6 pieces and headed out to the weaves. Anyone who has trained with me knows that this dog loves hot dogs. She likes it more than anything else I’ve tried, so I figured maybe *more* of a hot dog would be more motivating than less of a hot dog.
Boy was I right. It look less than 10 hot dogs over 10 days to transform my weaves. I was able to do front crosses, rear crosses, have her drive forward, hard entries, add people and get weaves that looked SMOKIN HOT. I was happy with the result and had other things to work on, so I moved on to more reps with smaller hot dogs for other behaviors. The weaves have faded, but still remain immensely improved before those few days.
Today, at my Bailey-Farhoody Chicken Workshop on Cueing, Bob gave a lecture on Behavior in Nature. He made a very important point. Animals are always learning, they are always making decisions and they will evaluate a situation to determine if the reward will be enough to justify the effort expended. He then showed us example slides of a lion walking by zebras and cats laying in wait for birds. In both situations the proximity wasn’t right for the predator to seek prey, too much effort with unlikely reward.
It hit me. My weaves were successful because I finally found ENOUGH of the RIGHT reinforcement to justify the effort.
The trainer should accept the responsibility of arranging for sufficient positive reinforcement to make it worthwhile for the animal to play the game. -Bailey & Farhoody
Yes. That’s it.
But why did I give up on the big chunks of hot dog methodology if it worked so well? Because when you only have 6 rewards to give out, you don’t get a lot of repetitions and therefore, not much training time.
Here is my fatal flaw. I *love* training. I love the act of training. I made the hot dogs smaller so I could train longer. My dog isn’t any better for it, but instead it satisfies me.
But really, don’t I just want better behavior? Yes. Effort matters, I should appropriately reward it, especially with behaviors that are difficult for the dog. For me that is not tunnels or front crosses, but it is working around people, teeter, working around people, weaves, working around people, driving forward on aframe and dog walk, NOT choosing the table and working around people.
So the question is-would I rather spend more time training or less time training more successfully? I think I know the answer. . .