Building Ignition
“Much that is demanded of the dog in servitude is contrary to his nature and inclination. He will work with endless enthusiasm and effort when in pursuit of prey. On the contrary, while he dearly likes man's companionship, he detests menial servitude. Only by making work accessory to the pursuit of game, and so blending the two that he cannot discern where either begins or ends, can his best effort be engaged; or in such instances as he can discriminate, as in retrieving - which is almost entirely and educational act - he may show enthusiasm in it, for the sake of its association with the capturing of prey and also for the kind approbation of his master.”
“Fetch & Carry - A Treatise on Retrieving,” by Bernard Waters 1895
There are a handful of videos that I have every client watch because they articulate really important concepts that are critical to success in training. The first one is this video on dopamine where Andrew Huberman discusses the different experiences an organism has when they receive rewards for free versus receive rewards as a consequence for putting some (even very minimal) effort into work.
The second is this video of Dr. Robert Sapolsky discussing how varying how often a reward is received as a consequence for doing work can impact the levels of dopamine released. Basically when we get rewarded for our work sometimes, instead of always, anticipation of reward takes the form of “hope” rather than “expectation”. And that greatly increases the power of the reward.
When we combine the information from these two videos, we can come away with some powerful insight into how rewards function in dog training.
Get rid of the silver spoon.
If your dog is used to not having to work for things of value, they will need some time to adjust to work, sort of like a spoiled kid. Since dogs can only “know” something through experience, we can’t tell them they have to work for things like food or play with toys. Instead we have to show them that these resources become scarce when they don’t make an effort in training and become abundant when they do make an effort. Whenever someone says their dog is not food motivated it’s usually because they get food for free, and if they don’t eat it now it will be available for them at whatever time they do choose to eat. If the dog won’t engage with the handler in game play like tug or fetch, it’s often because toys lay around the house all the time. Whatever you use as currency in training, the payment your dog receives for their work, it will be more effective if you don’t devalue it by giving it away for free at other times.
Do something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.
Some people try to train their dogs and then play with them. Others try to get their dog very excited and then ask them to do work. In both cases, when we play then work or work then play, we create contrast between work and play in a way that the dog makes a value judgement that one is good/fun and the other is bad/boring. A more ideal way to connect the two is ask the dog to do a little bit of work and show them it earns a reward. We do this for each repetition of a behavior early in the training process, referred to as “continuous reinforcement”. We are trying to blend work and play and the most artful trainers do it in a way that it is indistinguishable to the dog. Now the dog believe his performance of certain behaviors is what creates access to things he finds rewarding. We are “gamifying” training which is a great way to develop an active and engaged learner.
It means more when you have to work for it.
Early on in training we reward the dog handsomely for very little work. Over time we ask them to do more work for the same payoff, referred to as “variable reinforcement”. This can take the form of asking for more reps, asking for longer duration in a behavior, or increasing the distractions and competing motivators that tempt the dog to abandon their responsibility. We observe two things when using this strategy. The first is that by varying the frequency of reward, and trying to ride the dopamine wave by rewarding just before the dog would give up, we see that the added challenge actually increases the dog’s motivation to perform the work. The second is that on the occasions that the dog fails to earn a reward because of a poor choice on their part, loss aversion kicks in during the next session and they work much harder. It’s profound how much impact a missed opportunity can have if the dog really values the rewards we use in training.
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