Ever wanted to teach your furry friend something new, but ran far from ideas on how best to tackle learning? Or was the schooling lengthy and inefficient?

When learning new behaviors, many people, because of their lack of knowledge of numerous ways, often use uncomfortable, longer and even more difficult paths. Sometimes it even happens that the puppy already offers you a certain behavior, you don't even view it…

By understanding the training methods, you can choose the right the one which will be most pleasant for your needs along with your dog and can give you the best results. Therefore, it's very important you might be aware the properties of each and every regarding the techniques through which you can get towards the specified behavior.
4 techniques for learning new behaviors

To make sure that behavior to be confirmed and rewarded after all, we must first challenge it in some manner in to the dog. This is addressed in lots of ways, namely behavior can:

  modeling,
  capturing,
  luring or
  shaping.

All techniques are presented in detail below and explained on two practical cases

Example 1: we should teach your dog to go to the container (or room cage) on it's own.

Example 2: you wish to teach a dog to rotate around its axis.
1. Behavior modeling

When modeling habits, we use our force to greatly help (place) your dog into the correct position.

It really is a rather outdated method that does not need a lot of thinking and active participation through the dog. For slightly more timid dogs, however, it can be very uncomfortable and from now on we practically don’t put it to use anymore.

Example 1: your dog could be grabbed by the collar and taken fully to the container. There he might be confirmed and rewarded, and repeated until he won the exercises.

Example 2: your dog dog would be grabbed by the collar and spun in a circle - confirmed and rewarded.
2. Capturing behavior

Learning behaviors in dogs

We could chase all the behaviors that the dog performs by itself in every day life.

We take notice of the dog, we watch for behavior that folks would like to "catch" - we confirm and reward. The main advantage of hunting is the fact that we could catch behaviors that are otherwise hard to elicit (e.g. yawning, stretching,…).

It’s usually a reasonably lengthy learning process, because through to the dog finds out what he earned the reward with, he won’t offer a specific behavior as much because it's advisable.

Example 1: your dog accidentally enters an open box in your home - we confirm and reward.

Example 2: We catch your puppy when it accidentally spins in a circle (when, say, it hunts its tail) - we confirm and reward it.
3. Luring

When inviting, we challenge the behavior ourselves. By making use of food within the hand (which functions as bait), we guide your dog to execute the specified behavior. Most owners choose to make use of this behavior as it gives fast results.

Nevertheless, the road to self-implementation concerning the workout is still long. Namely, we have to slowly withdraw the bait, where it often gets stuck. Namely, this way of learning, dogs only think about food and blindly abide by it, therefore the help of bait and gestures must gradually "fade".

Example 1: A dog might be lured directly into a box by utilizing food at hand, confirmed and rewarded there.

Example 2: your pet dog will be lured with food at your fingertips to show left or right - confirmed and rewarded.
4. Shaping behavior

Behavior design is really an approach of learning that individuals usually think of as clicker training and needs essentially the most work from the dog's brain.

dog breeds that start with b are slightly additional time intensive than with other types of learning, and also the end result is normally more independent and well-formed behavior.

Defining behavior in pups - Shaping

The technique is somewhat reminiscent of a warm-cold game.

We begin learning with no help of bait, complaining, moving objects, and just by acknowledging and rewarding exactly what goes at least only a little in direction of the desired behavior.

As rewarding behavior backs this up, the puppy offers us this behavior more often. We are able to slowly be a little more picky and enhance the criteria. Thus, we only confirm behaviors that are nearer towards the ultimate desired behavior until we achieve it.

This method will demand us a tad bit more hours at the start, but deploying it could make learning each new exercise faster.

Example 1: We prepare food and a clicker and place ourselves near the container where we take notice of the dog. As soon as your dog makes a move away from us or simply looks at the container - we confirm and reward. When he offers us a go looking into the proper direction, we enhance the criteria and want him to create a move towards boxing - we confirm and encourage. After having a couple of clicks, we often have the capacity to have the dog towards the box. Then we increase the criterion and now we want him to put his head in it, then his paw… and so forth until he could be completely within it.

Example 2: We observe your furry friend dog and wait for moment when his gaze escapes to the side - confirmation and reward. The moment the puppy finds out why he had been rewarded and will be offering us behavior, we demand more. We watch for dog to show his head slightly to the left - click and reward. Then we require a movement linked to the head and in addition at least one foot. And two feet… and so on before the back to where it started to the left.