Ryan O'Meara, has written an excellent article on why For Some Dogs a Small Grunt is Reward Enough. He talks about visiting a Pointer-Retreiver man in Northern Scotland:
In the morning when we first went out with his dogs, I had my tiny mind blown at just how adoring his dogs were toward him. From the get-go, he never said a word to them. He silently strode about the moorland with his dogs following him like a supernatural idol. They really did think he was God. I may as well have been invisible. These dogs never paid me even the most minute glance. HE was IT as far as they were concerned.
He put his dogs to work, using whistle commands only, and I got a great lesson. Less, in the way of noise, is more when it comes to dogs.
In the afternoon we did some actual training on a young dog (8 months old).
What struck me was the reward part of his process. A soft grunt, a very light touch under the dog's chin and BOY that was enough for that dog to just melt.I had to ask: "Is that it?" "That's all you do to reward them?"
"Yes. At this age, they know when they've done good." "When they're very young puppies, I'm a little more animated."
I imagined his version of animated is probably quite different to mine!
For the record, Ryan was one of the behavioural assessors on the BBC's dog training show Dog Borstal and he has just come out with new book, Clever Dog: Life Lessons From Man's Best Friend. Check it out!
- Related Link:
** Look, I Accidentally Proved There’s No God!
5 comments:
Really excellent, and fairly brief. A lesson for we over-praisers and long-winded posters.
seahorse ;)
This makes me feel a little better, for when I get nasty looks for not jumping all around and getting all high-pitched during training sessions in public. I have actually had one person ask "Well, aren't you going to reward her for doing a good job?" I had no answer at the time other than "I did, but you must have missed it because it wasn't food."
Most days when my dog and I are really "in tune," all I need to do is smile and narrow my eyes. Her face just melts and the tail starts going. Physical touch is just the icing on the cake.
It's a great reminder to turn off the baby-talk towards dogs, of which I have a bad habit anyway. They don't care.
If a hunting dog is hunting or a working dog is working, then it would seem to me that the activity itself is 90 percent of the reward. So "a soft grunt" might then be enough extra praise.
Exactly! The way I reward my terriers in the field is they get to do it again. Work is its own reward.
Exactly, inasmuch as the feeling of relief is the reward of emptying the bladder or bowels as in potty training--not the treat one gets for doing so!
Never understood why people need to bring food treats into things like housetraining other than to make themselves feel good.
Then again, when you're an "expert" on dogs named Jon Katz and think that border collies actually learn to herd by clickers...
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