If your sport doesn't allow you to bring primary reinforcers onto the competition field with you, then at some point you need to work through removing those reinforcers from your training. This week Shade and I talk about the process of reducing reinforcement while minimizing frustration on the part of both dog and handler.
Transcription
Melissa Breau: This is Melissa Breau and you're listening to the Fenzi Dog Sports Podcast, brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy, an online school dedicated to providing high quality instruction for competitive dog sports using only the most current and progressive training methods. Today I'll be talking to Shade White Self about reducing reinforcement. Hi, Shade. Welcome back to the podcast.
Shade Whitesel: Thank you so much for having me on. It's always a pleasure.
Melissa Breau: Excited to chat. To start us out, do you want to just remind everybody kind of a little bit about you? So I am owned by German shepherds and I've got a seven year old and a three year old right now. And I just did nationals with a three year old at the level two. Basically you compete really at the level three, but I did level two and I won. That was back in November, so that was kind of fun.
Melissa Breau: Congratulations again. Thank you. It was, it was, it felt good. Things like that don't always feel good. And it's a young dog and, you know, but I'm looking forward to the future with this dog. We compete in IGP, which used to be called Schutzhund. So I kind of still call it Schutzhund because I've been doing it for so long, but it's at its finest.
It's basically almost 30 minutes in the obedience phase without reinforcement. So I kind of feel like I know what I'm talking about when we're talking about reducing reinforcement because I definitely have to do that with my own dogs and it has to be intentional, otherwise they get super frustrated and they bark and that is points off. So. So yeah, that's a little bit about me.
Melissa Breau: Cool. And we're definitely talking about that today. So when we talk about reducing reinforcement, what does that mean? Kind of in practical terms, what are we actually reducing it? Are we talking about frequency or intensity or type or context? Talk to me a little bit about that. I think mostly we're talking about non trial legal stuff or life stuff or whatever you're looking for as the end result. So trials are always something I talk about because it's just clean like goals.
Like your goal is to be able to heal for this long without your primary reinforcement, which you can't use in trial. So. So that's really what I'm thinking about. Like. So in its basic, you can use other. You can get your dog used to reducing reinforcement by sticking other cheat behaviors in there that aren't trial legal. Like that would be the training process. But what you're looking at ideally is getting away from the primary reinforcement of treats and toy play, that's kind of what you're looking at.
Melissa Breau: So do you only think about reducing reinforcement kind of once a behavior is solid, or do you start kind of thinking about it and working on it as you're building skills?
Shade Whitesel: So I definitely think about it as I'm building skills. I think in order not to create a frustrated dog, we need to think about it immediately. If we keep everything. Like one of the things that I used to do as a young trainer is as I was training something, everything would be on a one to one.
You do one behavior, you get, you know, one item of reinforcement. And then when you're trying to sequence that or add that into trial, it becomes very hard for your dog because you've created that expectation of. I said, I get a treat. So when you say sit and hand touch, the dog's like, hey, I'm frustrated because I didn't get my treat. You just did a hundred sits and gave me a treat.
So we have to be really careful of the dog's expectations when we're training. And my favorite thing is like looking at cheap, easy behavior. So like very quickly it might be sit, "X," treat, and then it might be sit hand touch treat or hand touch, hand touch, mark treat. So very quickly I think if we are thinking enough about, you know, what our end goal is, we start to go, okay, how can we add other behaviors that are cheap and easy for the dog? And yeah, so I really like building behaviors. Like, I love that, but I also am like thinking about what the end result is.
Melissa Breau: So when you talk about that, just to dive in a little more, are you talking about taking the new behavior, teaching and stacking a different well known behavior before the reinforcement? Or are you talking about like when you're teaching a hand touch, you would try and go for two hand touches. Does that make sense?
Shade Whitesel: It's both. So I'm using a hand touch because that's usually a really cheap behavior for most dogs. And so usually you can stick in. You know, once you've taught that hand touch, you could do two hand touches. But I'm also talking about, because hand touch is such a cheap, easy behavior, it's a, it's a really easy thing to add in proper sequencing from something you're training.
Melissa Breau: What are kind of other thoughts for thinning out our reinforcement here without making the dog? You talked about, you know, not getting a frustrated dog or a dog that maybe feels ignored when it's offering the behaviors that you want. Right. So how do you kind of think about that and thinning it out?
Shade Whitesel: So I always. So a couple things I really want people to think about. Reducing reinforcement in terms of paying for effort rather than behaviors.
And I think we often get caught on, okay, every sit equals, you know, a treat. Just to go back to the basics, but when your puppy is learning how to sit, yeah, every sit deserves a treat. But, like, the sit in a known environment becomes so much easier in terms of effort than a sit at a busy street with things going on. So I do think that, that that's the way that if I'm being my best trainer self, that's the way I think about it, is I'm.
It's my responsibility to reinforce in terms of effort. And I. I remember Julie Flanery saying something about how we pay too much for easy behaviors and we don't. We're really stingy about hard behaviors. And I find this is so true. We, you know, we pay a lot for, like, luring and following, you know, our hand, which is, like, not as much effort for your average dog. And then we don't pay enough for, like, a retreat, which is super hard for the majority of the dogs.
So I. So I encourage my students, I talk about this in class, and I encourage myself to think more about that. The other kind of part of your question, like, how do we thin out? How do we get rid of frustration? Is kind of what I talked about before with, you know, expectations, but also, like, keeping that connection with the dog. And that means eye contact. That means praise, you know, good dog, giving them information.
So, like, it. It's. I do think that praise, real, genuine praise from the handler, like, you are the most awesome dog ever, is kind of underlooked as a bridge to the primary reinforcement. So. So I've just re. Again, depends on the dog. Depends on the dog breed, probably depends on what else you have with the dog. But my current dog is just so. He just lights up when I tell him how great a job he's done.
And I know that I tend to be a pretty quiet trainer, so I've been trying to kind of add that and trying to make sure that my students add that. So. And kind of like, one other thing about that is that oftentimes when we dispense a reinforcement to our dog, I'm kind of going down a rabbit hole. I'm going to do it, though, is that we kind of toss the treat at the dog and we look away because we're thinking about it.
I just taught a seminar, so I'm, like, thinking about this instead, you know, like, we look away, and so the dogs, like, they ate the treat, but we kind of disconnected from them. And so a lot of times dogs really still want that connection. So kind of keeping that eye contact or attention towards the dog is a really underlooked kind of thing for us. So I've lately been concentrating on that with my students.
Melissa Breau: So just to step back in what you said for a second. So you mentioned something about the sit and kind of not rewarding for every sit, but you're rewarding for effort. And so you talked about like, sit at home in a known context is easy, and then on a street corner, it might not be so easy.
Shade Whitesel: I think that's a really interesting thing to talk about when we're talking about reducing reinforcement, because I think so often people think once a behavior, once I've stopped reinforcing for the behavior, I'm not considering going back to reinforcing before the havior, if that makes sense.
Melissa Breau: And it sounds like you're adapting that based on, like, how much effort's required in that given context or in that given environment or whatnot. Am I understanding that right?
Shade Whitesel: Yep. And it's. It's a little more complicated than that. So, like, variable reward comes into it, you know, like, do you know, I might reward 50 sits in the easy environment. And one sit in I, you know, each sit the dog does in a distracting environment, maybe inside, you know, because that's easy for the dog.
I only reward one every 50 often times. Another part of it for me is that I make sure the dog has a robust reward history, which I'm actually meaning, like different reward locations, different types of rewards. So, like, maybe you said to go out the door, maybe you sit to get access to your friends in that you're making that behavior of sit more robust and confident from the dog.
But you're also. Because the reinforcement is in different places or the dog has to listen or they get to, you know, that reinforcement is different in that, you know, they don't get a treat, but they do get to meet their friends. All those things go into our ability later to reinforce. To reduce reinforcement in sequencing and trials and things. We like that. So it just bears thinking about that reinforcement is not just treats and toys, but also putting the variable reward.
I do cover all of that in that upcoming class in February, that "Cutting Out the Cookie" class, because it is a complex kind of thing. So I try to recipe it out as much as I can and talk about those things.
Melissa Breau: So I think that leads really well. Into what I was going to ask you next, which is, you know, how do you know that you're reinforcing the right moments when you're reducing reinforcement?
Like, how do you decide, yes, this time I'm going to give a cookie, or I'm going to throw a toy, or I'm going to open the door or whatever. Like, versus this time I'm not going to add reinforcement. How do you think about that?
Shade Whitesel: That's a good question. I have the same criteria. So if I'm going to reward a set or reinforce it, I am going to reinforce the best sit the dog did.
So when you're looking like dogs that know behaviors, and I'm looking at a truly variable reinforcement, I'm gonna re. I'm gonna mark and enforce those. The best sitting, the best behaviors my dog does. So the same criteria is when I'm teaching, or hopefully when I'm teaching, I've got clear criteria, the same thing. I'm gonna choose those moments. So, like, a really complex behavior for dogs is healing. And oftentimes healing.
You know, their position is in step. They may lag a little, they may touch you, they may forge a little. So assuming my dog sort of knows heeling and I've kind of thinking about variable reward, I'm going to pick the best healing that my dog did in a span of 50 steps, for instance, and mark and reinforce that. And that way you're going to have your chances of more of that best healing.
Melissa Breau: So, yeah, we've been talking about all this, like, reducing reinforcement piece, and I think that that is really maybe the same, maybe a little bit different from the idea of, like, delayed reinforcement. So when you're thinking about immediate reinforcement versus delayed reinforcement, how does that kind of layer into what we're talking about, Especially when we're talking about, like, complex behaviors?
Shade Whitesel: Kind of difficult question to, you know, piece out, but one things I do think about is, like, when you're talking about complex behaviors, sometimes you've got a behavior that is always hard.
And I think it's also smart to keep. Keep that in your mind. So, like, for instance, I just taught the "Retrieve" class, and I have yet to, in my history of teaching, like, 11, 12 dogs and my own personal dogs retrieve right now, I have yet to get a dog that does it perfectly every time and thinks it's easy. Like, they like it. But, you know, they have to sit really still.
They have to hold it without chewing. They have to come into front really still. So that's always going to get a very immediate and often reinforcement. So if you're talking about immediate versus delayed, I'm thinking to myself, okay, the hard behaviors, I'm going to have much more immediate reinforcement. Whereas something like healing that my dogs like and find pretty easy later on in their lives or in their career, I'm going to do a lot of delayed reinforcement for healing.
I'm going to like heel, then ask for sit in motion and then reinforce it. Or I'm going to ask for, you know, heel, sit heel down, and then reinforce it down. So there's a. So, so basically I think how I'm kind of answering it is I will stick other behaviors in there. I will, you know, stick more duration in there with behaviors the dog knows very well and is very confident in and finds easy.
Whereas the more complex stuff that I don't feel like they're as confident in, you know, getting the right correct behavior the whole time, I'm going to keep that pretty immediate reinforcement.
Melissa Breau: What are some of the signs? We were talking earlier about frustration, and I think that's not the only thing necessarily. Obviously German shepherds, maybe you're getting barking, but for some people, they're more likely to maybe get disengagement or, you know, signs of really uncertainty kind of behaviors that show them that maybe the dog's confused when the dog is becoming or when reinforcement is reduced.
So what are those signs that you might be seeing if that's the case, and then how do you handle that?
Shade Whitesel: So let's look at that two ways. We've got. We've got the dog's behavior deteriorating in a sequence. So one of the sequences that I do in IGP is we'll heel to a sit out of motion. Then we'll come back and we'll heal to a down out of motion, recall finish, and then heal to a stampede out of motion.
Out of motion means that I continue forward while I'm cuing the dog to sit down or stand. So if I'm trying to put those together, what I will see happen is that the speed of the down and the stand and the sit starts to get slower. So that tells me I have a confused dog or just an uncertain dog. A dog that's like, did you really. Is this really what I'm supposed to do?
So I'm going to look for behaviors like that where I know the dog, I know I've taught a fast sit, for instance, and then it starts to deteriorate. So I'm always on the lookout for that. And so my plan A would be I'm going to do, you know, the whole three motions. And my plan B would be, whoops, I just saw that sit was pretty slow. I'm going to break out there.
I might work on a couple sits. I might stick it back in the sequence, or I might not. I might change to plan b and not work on chaining those three behaviors sequences together. The other thing that I'm looking at, and hopefully I'm catching this before is built into all my training, is what does that reset look like? And the reset is when the dog eats the treat or gets the toy.
How long does it take after they eat the treat for them to kind of connect back to me, usually in eye contact. Hopefully, if I'm noticing that and I'm keeping track of that, that deteriorates for the majority of dogs before their behaviors start to deteriorate. So I am always looking at how the dog resets, assuming their baseline is swipe up the treat and orientate. To me, that's a trained thing.
I do make sure I train that. So I'm like, when I'm sequencing, let's say I did 50 steps of heeling, and I play with my dog, and they sort of hold on to the joy. They don't really offer drop. That kind of tells me. And I'm always looking for this in my dogs. That kind of tells me, ooh, that was hard for my dog. So I don't want to do another 50 steps because then of heeling, because then I'm going to definitely get some deterioration of my heeling.
And what told me that was the reset wasn't as clean and clear as that dog's baseline. So. And of course, changing to different environments, different locations also, you know, brings us out in the dog. And it's kind of the same thing. So I kind of look at all of it the same thing. I want clean, clear resets. I want to know when your reset differs. That tells me I need to adjust something so that I don't get a lot of rehearsal from my dogs of behavior skills that aren't up to par.
I really want to keep those behaviors sacred and reliable and as fast as that dog can do. So I'm just super careful about that. Again, I went down a rabbit hole about it.
Melissa Breau: It's a good rabbit hole, though. I think it's an important one to think about. Right. Because you're. You're talking about, like, I think a lot of people do wait till they're getting consistently slower sits or they're getting, you know, really obvious kind of signs their dog is you know, confused or frustrated or disengaging or, you know, maybe the dog actually walks away from the training right before they're, before they realize that, hey, we have a problem.
And you're talking about something much earlier in the process, which is just how the dog receives the reinforcement before they even, you know what I mean? Like, before you're even seeing any of those more obvious signs. And hopefully you've trained these behaviors and you're seeing this while the training. So it's not new to you that this happens in when you start to reduce the reinforcement. I just taught my "Retrieve" class for FDSA last term, and one of the things that I want students to look at is I want the dog to offer a sit.
So you would be giving them two, two treats. One treat for holding the object and then another treat thrown to get the dog to come back to offer a sit to allow you to present the hold object again. And what I want people to do is I want them to look at the fluency of that offered sit. Because if we went a little too far, we asked for a little too much duration or an independent hold when the dog wasn't ready for it, chances are that dog is going to offer that sit, sit slower.
They're going to come in, they're going to like, pause, they're going to hesitate, and then they're going to offer this set. And that tells me as the dog's teacher that they're a little bit uncertain. And so whatever made them uncertain, I'm going to do an easy rep. And so as we're teaching this, we, I encourage people to start like having those kinds of, of resets, it's kinds of knowledge on the handler's part, on the teacher's part to notice that and then adjust to an easier rep, an easier skill so that this becomes something that the handler teacher kind of just starts to notice.
And so when you're doing something like reducing reinforcement or sequencing for a trial, you notice that too, because the dog did that during training. So that's just so important in my training is to have those built in pauses in there for the dog to offer something that makes me then do something. And usually that's like some form of offered behavior like the set for the grab presentation or something like eye contact for other. Other things.
Melissa Breau: Is there ever a time when you actually see reducing reinforcement support a dog's confidence and problem solving ability, like actually boost the things that we want even though you're reducing reinforcement?
Shade Whitesel: Nope, that's a hard no. I think that's funny that I, I, you know, it's like really, do I really say no on that? I think training supports a dog confidence, teaches them how to think, teaches them how to offer stuff, teaches them resilience.
They, the dog and the handler work through teaching something. Does taking the reward away support a dog's confidence? No. It always did. I mean, I'm sure there's a case out there, but most of the time when we're looking for a trial ready, I'm just talking trial and sport. When we're looking for that, it oftentimes detracts it. I've rarely had a trial like add it often there's fallout. The dog wasn't quite ready for something that you have no control over.
So most of the time, like getting to a trial worthy experience is not a fun trial day is not fun for the dog. So you're like going back immediately and putting more reinforcement in that training communication bank that you've established with your dog. But training the skills definitely can, can promote resilience, the dog, problem solving, all that kind of stuff. So I guess I make a big difference between training a skill and then getting to what I call sequencing and sticking stuff together and like reducing reinforcement for that.
Melissa Breau: So we're talking about this because you do have a class in February about all of this stuff. Cutting Out the Cookies or Toys: Reducing Reinforcement for R Plus Trainers. So talk a little more about the maybe who might want to sign up if there's any kind of point at training they kind of want to be at before they try and take the class. You know, that kind of stuff.
So I really want people to have some finished behaviors. They do not have to be trial behaviors even if you're looking for a trial. But they got to be some finished behaviors. And by finished I mean on verbal cue or a trial legal cue. Okay, so most of the time that's verbal. If you can use signals, that's fine. So verbal cue and then you can mark and then reinforce what I want.
So that's what I consider a finished behavior. And I talk about this in the first week of class about here's an example of a behavior we're training and here's an example of finished behavior. So you don't have to have like your try like say you trial and rally. You don't have to have all that, all the skills, you just have to have a couple. So we can start to work through the process that you would take those trial skills and train different locations, train like a start and end ritual, you know, do a trial run through, and then you can ask your dog the questions in yourself.
Are you ready to trial? Are you not? And then, you know, in that class, I talk about reinforcing effort. So, like, it's a combination of, like, taking those finished behaviors and putting them into the trial thing, and then also, like, teaching and paying attention to things like, like the start and end rituals, the does your dog know what they're doing? Things like that. Yeah, I think that about covers it.
It's a fun class. It's definitely a lot of work, but it's a really important piece, I think, that a lot of people struggle with. So it's a huge deal since I, you know, like, okay, so I'm looking at trial in the middle of April. So that's about two and a half months away right now. And so I look at trial prep being two months before trial. So I look at two, two and a half months, and I ought to have mostly behaviors trained.
So I'm looking at two months of really intently trial prepping, sequencing, making sure that the dog, you know, can do the behaviors, because a lot of times they can do the behaviors one at a time. You stick them into some, you know, sequencing. And that behavior you train so well and the dog knows so well, or you thought they knew so well and they don't. So that's also part of, like, trial sequencing is sticking on the known behaviors together and seeing what holds up, arousal level, all those kinds of things.
So kind of my main point is I take at least two months really getting into trial prepping and really making sure the dog is used to long stretches without the primary reinforcement, things like that. I just had a seminar with a guy who has done so well in my spirit sport, and his dog didn't do well at the trial before the seminar. And I asked him, like, what do you think went wrong?
Because he. He's like, second in Worlds. He's done so well. And he's like, I didn't have a. It snowed, like, where he was two weeks before the trial. And so he lost his last two weeks of trial prep. And I was like, that makes so much sense. And I just thinking. And when you're looking at also trial prepping, because I trial over and over and over again, I want to make sure that my dog's experience at the trial is as good as possible.
So even though I talked about the fact that your dog has this, like, you know, because the trial is hard for them, they don't get any reinforcement, there's often a withdrawal in your training bank of reinforcement. The better you make the dog feel and the better they expect. Expect it. They know what to expect. They know what they're doing. It doesn't come as a surprise you're not tricking your dog.
The better off your next trial after the one you did is. And so this is also super important to me because I trial over and over. I know that I can get my dog to a good level, they'll do it well. But my real intention is they come out of that trial with little to no fallout because I can then trial again. And I think this is super important because people, like, do really well and then they never reach that again because they, the dog felt tricked, didn't know.
Like, dogs are so generous with us. They figure it out, they do it, but they don't. It doesn't mean they had a good time, doesn't mean they, you know, whatever. And so for me, I just really, really want to know that my dog had as good an experience as possible. And then I know that the next trial will be that much better.
Melissa Breau: So, yeah, fair enough. Any kind of final thoughts or key points you want to kind of leave folks with?
Shade Whitesel: I think I kind of covered a lot of it. Reinforce for effort, not behavior. Like, keep that in your brain. And I really do hope I see you at class. It's going to be such a fun class. I really like teaching this. Just kind of spreading the knowledge of what to do because I think that's something we talk a lot about, building behaviors, but we don't, you know, get as in as instructors. This is another huge piece of getting to trial. So, yeah, it's fun.
Melissa Breau: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk about this shade. Yeah, thanks for having me and thanks to our listeners for tuning in. We'll be back next week. Don't miss it. If you haven't already, subscribe to our podcast in itunes or the podcast app of your choice to have our next episode automatically downloaded to your phone as soon as it becomes available.
Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty free by BenSound.com. The track featured here is called Buddy Audio Editing provided by Chris Lang. And thanks again for tuning in and happy training.
Credits
Today's show is brought to you by the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. Special thanks to Denise Fenzi for supporting this podcast. Music provided royalty-free by BenSound.com; the track featured here is called "Buddy." Audio editing provided by Chris Lang.
Thanks again for tuning in -- and happy training!