Dog Parks are a relatively new cultural phenomenon, and have increased in both number and popularity over the last 15 years. It is an understatement to say that people are rather polarized in their views of dog parks. Advocates maintain that these designated areas provide invaluable opportunities for dogs to enjoy off-lead exercise, socialization and play with other … Continue reading Dog Park People
Behavior and Training
The Consequences of Consequences
Operant learning is all about consequences. Most trainers and behaviorists are well-versed in the uses of pleasant and aversive stimuli as dog training consequences. These can be constructed into a 2 x 2 matrix that includes the type of stimulus (desirable/pleasant or aversive/unpleasant) as one factor and the intended behavioral change (increase or decrease response frequency) as the second factor … Continue reading The Consequences of Consequences
The Ben Franklin Effect
Benjamin Franklin was a pretty amazing guy. The quintessential Renaissance Man, he was a scientist, inventor, author, musician, scholar, business man and politician. There are many popular stories and quotes from Franklin's life, but one in particular demonstrates his astute understanding of human behavior. In fact, this story became so well-known that it eventually led to what is now … Continue reading The Ben Franklin Effect
Deconstructing the Click
I am a clicker trainer. All of my own dogs are clicker trained and many of the classes that we teach at my training school, AutumnGold are "clicker-centric". Clicker training is not only a scientifically sound approach to teaching dogs new things, but is also a kind, enjoyable, and bond-strengthening method of training - something that benefits both dogs and their people. 7-MONTH-OLD SIMON LEARNS EYE … Continue reading Deconstructing the Click
The Quiz
Imagine that you have enrolled in a college math course. You have been attending lectures for several weeks and although the material is quite difficult, you feel that the instructor has been explaining the concepts very clearly and that you have been able to learn a great deal from his lectures. You have completed and … Continue reading The Quiz
Beware the Straw Man
Many animal shelters regularly use standardized tests to assess the behavior of dogs and to determine adoption suitability. However, while the use of these tests has become ubiquitous, there is a distinct lack of research demonstrating their reliability or validity. In other words, while testing a dog's degree of friendliness, aggression and fear prior to adoption makes intuitive sense and feels like a good idea, we do not … Continue reading Beware the Straw Man
This test that you keep using……
The availability heuristic is a common cognitive error that influences our ability to make accurate decisions. It is operating full-force whenever we base a decision upon evidence that is easily available (i.e. dramatic, obvious, easily measured) but that may not actually reflect reality. In practice, this means that we pay more attention to evidence that is salient (obvious and … Continue reading This test that you keep using……
Love me, love my dog……New twist on an old belief
Everyone is familiar with that old saw about dogs looking like their owners......certainly, there are plenty of photos in this genre floating around the internet......... However, appearances aside, this common belief leads one to ask - Do dogs often behave similarly to their owners? Or more precisely, do dogs and their owners share personality traits? Recently, a group of collaborating … Continue reading Love me, love my dog……New twist on an old belief
Yogi Bear Dogs
Do you live with a Yogi Bear dog? You know what I mean - one of those smarter than the average bear dogs? I am quite certain that I live with several. For example, Chippy my Toller, excels at retrieving rings and carefully placing them over a pylon, riding a skateboard (sometimes recklessly, in my opinion), and playing … Continue reading Yogi Bear Dogs
Speaking of treats…..
Like kids with their Halloween candy, do dogs rank the treats that we provide to them? Many trainers selectively use what we call "high-value treats" for some behaviors and "low-value treats" for others. However, other than subjectively observing the level of our dog's pleasure at receiving different types of treats, do we have actual evidence that treats vary in their influence upon … Continue reading Speaking of treats…..
Treat Please!
One of the things that I love best about training dogs (and there are many, many things to love about training dogs) is that they respond well to so many different types of positive reinforcement. We have a wide variety of "fun stuff" from which to choose that communicates "Yes!!! That is it!! You are SO … Continue reading Treat Please!
Is it time for the extinction of extinction?
Each of these photographs shows a dog jumping up on a person.....with the person appearing to be quite happy about the interaction. Yet, jumping up to greet is a frequently cited complaint that dog owners make to dog trainers. While I am sympathetic to owners' frustrations, the underlying cause for jumping up in … Continue reading Is it time for the extinction of extinction?
Smell This!
Dogs smell things. A lot of things. A lot of the time. Their noses are very important to them. And, most dog folks would agree that the dog's nose is a pretty amazing sense organ. Indeed, we capitalize on our dogs' olfactory (smellin') acuity when we train them to select scent articles in Utility training, … Continue reading Smell This!
Your face is gonna freeze like that (Part 4)…….(a.k.a. Why we need multiple Steves)
So, here we are, with three study groups described in Part 3 of this series. Each group consists of 25 young adult dogs, representing a range of breeds and breed-types. This collection of dogs is considered a sample of the population that we are testing. In this example, we identify the population as all young adult dogs living in … Continue reading Your face is gonna freeze like that (Part 4)…….(a.k.a. Why we need multiple Steves)
Your face is gonna freeze like that (Part 3)…….(aka: How many Steves?)
The mental manipulations that we described in Part 1 are actually a form of psychological priming. Priming occurs when the way in which a person responds to an event (stimulus) is influenced by a previous stimulus. Perhaps most intriguing is the fact that much of this influence takes place outside of our conscious awareness. In part 2, we presented our working hypothesis that priming may … Continue reading Your face is gonna freeze like that (Part 3)…….(aka: How many Steves?)
The Science Dog 