This is a brand-new class; the syllabus is currently being created. Week 1 topics are listed below together with outlines for weeks 2 - 6.

Week 1

• Learning via positive reinforcement.
• Stimulus control, cue discrimination, and generalization
• Cue salience, overshadowing, cue transfer, and extinction.
• Superstitious behaviors.
• Bribing versus reinforcing.
• Luring.
• Steps for progressing from luring to cueing.
• Shaping.
• Setting criteria.
• Summary for creating a new behavior / trick.

Plus 2-3 practical exercises.

Week 2

• The phases of learning.
• Reinforcement schedules.
• Transitioning from a continuous schedule to an intermittent schedule.
• Reducing reinforcement.
• Selecting an appropriate rate of reinforcement (ROR).
• Effective use of props.
• Fading props.

Plus 2-3 practical exercises.

Week 3

• Extrinsic motivation - Intrinsic motivation.
• The relationship between reinforcement and motivation.
• Prioritizing motivation.
• Building motivation.
• The relationship between confidence and motivation.
• Reward events.
• Reward placement.

Plus 2-3 practical exercises.

Week 4

• Reinforcement: Fixed versus variable.
• Considerations when training sequences.
• Duration.
• Mental stamina.
• Leaving rewards behind.
• Adding distance to tricks / behaviors

Plus 2-3 practical exercises.

Week 5

• Rewards as masking agents.
• Repositioning and fidgeting.
• Rewarding the behavior of "waiting".
• Ending an exercise without treats / toys.
• Ending a session / Taking a break.
• Troubleshooting issues that may be linked to "reduced reinforcement".

Plus 2-3 practical exercises.

Week 6

• Introducing formality.
• The environment.
• The interplay between work and the environment.
• Commitment and distractions.
• Beyond the treats and toys.
• Reaching our end goal for "reducing reinforcement".

Plus 2-3 practical exercises.

1.5. - Superstitious behaviors

Superstitious behaviors are behaviors that become embedded into “goal behaviors” (i.e. although we were not intentionally reinforcing those behaviors, they were occurring simultaneously with the behavior/s we were reinforcing, and hence they too became reinforced).

Below are a couple of examples:

• We are training (and hence intentionally reinforcing) the behavior of “spinning” on cue, but during the learning phase of training the spin, our dog also barked on every occasion whilst spinning. As a result, our dog may believe that “barking whilst spinning” is the goal behavior, rather than just “spinning”. The outcome being that in the future, every time we cue the “spin” behavior, our dog will simultaneously spin and bark. In this example, the behavior of “barking” is a superstitious behavior because our dog believes it is an aspect of the goal behavior, even though the true goal behavior we were attempting to train was just the spin.

• We are training our dog to run to a platform, and our only criteria is that our dog places four feet on the platform. During the training phase though, our dog sits on the platform as soon as they arrive at the platform. Once we repeatedly mark/reinforce the behavior of “running to the platform and sitting”, our dog will believe that sitting on the platform is the “correct” behavior. This is perfectly fine, if the ”sit” is irrelevant to us, but if we had originally planned to teach our dog to go to the platform and wait in a stand position, it will be challenging to re-train the behavior to occur without the superstitious “sit” behavior occurring upon arrival at the platform.

Superstitious behaviors are simply labelled as “superstitious” because we didn’t actively target those specific behaviors in the training process (i.e. they were not part of our criteria for the end goal behavior). Importantly though, our dog believes that the additional (superstitious) behaviors form part of the total behavior that leads to reinforcement, because we have repeatedly reinforced the performance of those additional (superstitious) behaviors when we marked / reinforced the goal behavior.

Preventing “superstitious behaviors”.

During the process of training a new trick / behavior, we may notice additional (superstitious) behavior/s occurring, but we may actively decide to ignore those “additional behaviors” because they do not affect the functionality of the goal behavior (e.g. our dog performs a small head toss as they commence a “bark on cue” and we decide that the head toss is of no relevance to us, so we don’t attempt to prevent the head toss becoming part of the overall end behavior.)

However, more commonly, unwanted additional (superstitious) behaviors become embedded in the cued behavior because we are so heavily focused on observing and marking the goal behavior, that we don’t even realize additional behavior/s are becoming embedded into that overall behavior.

When superstitious behaviors are irrelevant (i.e. we don’t care about the extra behavior; it doesn’t influence the functionality of the goal behavior or impact the scoring of the trick / behavior in the competition ring), we can simply ignore them in the training process. Superstitious behaviors can even add uniqueness to a trick, because each dog will add their own idiosyncrasies in the way they perform that trick / behavior (e.g. an extra head flick, or the way they move a paw in a paw lift trick, etc.), and then these quirks become embedded into that specific behavior / trick.

Sometimes however, superstitious behaviors are highly relevant, in that they impact the functionality of the goal behavior, or they are “undesirable” (e.g. if a dog routinely barks whilst waiting to be released from a mat, the dog may eventually believe that barking is part of the overall behavior that leads to reinforcement (i.e. leads to being released from the mat) and barking in this context may be an undesirable additional behavior).

To avoid unwanted superstitious behaviors being embedded into a goal behavior, it is important to notice ALL the behaviors our dog is performing when we are training a new behavior / exercise / trick and ensure that any unwanted components aren’t repeatedly occurring (and hence repeatedly being reinforced).

If we do notice a specific, unwanted behavior occurring repeatedly during the initial training phase of a new behavior / trick, we need to immediately change the set-up or change the timing of our marking, so the goal behavior can be performed (and reinforced) WITHOUT the unwanted component. For example:

• If our end goal is for our dog to go to a platform and stand, but we notice our dog has sat on several reps as soon as they arrived at the platform, we will need to adjust the timing of our marking (i.e. mark as soon as our dog’s feet hit the platform) for many successive reps, so as to allow our dog to recognize that the “sit” is not required in order to access rewards.
• If our end goal is for our dog to spin without barking, but we notice on several reps that our dog is barking whilst spinning, we will need to adjust our dog’s arousal level, and/or reduce the frustration / excitement they are experiencing, such that they can perform the goal behavior (i.e. “spinning”) without the unwanted behavior (i.e. “barking”), and then we can reinforce just the spin (without the barking).

Eliminating established superstitious behaviors.

Eliminating superstitious behaviors from an established behavior can be challenging.

In some instances, it may be possible to reinforce the performance of the goal behavior WITHOUT the unwanted pieces (e.g. by manipulating the set-up, so that we can reinforce the goal behavior quickly BEFORE the unwanted superstitious behavior is performed).

However, we may need to go back and re-train the initial behavior again (but without the inclusion of the unwanted superstitious behavior).