Shaping Behavior In Dog Training: Tips To Get Success Faster

Nearly everyone interested in dog training has heard about shaping behavior, and most dog trainers use shaping, but there are different ways to shape. I’ve got tips on how to get success faster and what you need to know about the difference between free shaping and layered shaping. In the 1990’s I started with free shaping. Free shaping is where you get yourself a clicker and a bowl of cookies. And you stand in a room, and you wait for your dog to do something. And maybe they like, you know, turn their head and you click and you feed that. And maybe they move towards the door, and you click, and you feed that. Now, obviously you're gonna have an outcome in mind, but you're waiting for the dog to do something. It's free. They're just doing things. You might not have an outcome in mind when you're free shaping. You might just go, “Hey, let's just see what they want to offer.” And so, you just click and reward anything the dog does, and you see what happens. You can also free shape by putting a prop down and click and reward the puppy or the dog for interacting with that. Sometimes I'll get a dog interested in shaping by putting a container - like a plastic container with holes in it - and a big meaty bone in there and click and rewarding the dog for just interacting with that thing. Right? It's a way of getting them to freely offer behaviors. So free shaping is free. So, if somebody wanted to teach a dog, let's say, to retrieve something. They might put a ball down on the floor and they click the dog for looking at it and walking towards it. There's a video on my blog that shows a great example of me free shaping a behavior way back in the Nineties. And then me shaping it the way I do now. And the difference was – I believe – the one I did with my Border Collie, Stoni, way back when, it might have been in early 2000. I can't really recall, but it took three and a half minutes for her to get the behavior. With my Border Collie, Encore (dogs very closely related) it took like three seconds to get the same behavior. Okay. So free shaping to me: I don't do it. The only time I would do it is if I just wanted to click and reward a dog for doing whatever they felt like doing. Which, honestly, I used to do back in the Nineties. But I really don't anymore. The reason why I don't free shape is because I believe number one: you build in a lot of cheap behaviors you might not want and that might be difficult to get rid of. For example, if I wanted my dog to pick something up and they're getting frustrated and anxious, they'll start vocalizing. And then they pick something up and you get that vocalizing into the behavior. You get the anxiety built into the behavior. So, I don't want the cheap behaviors like barking, or they might start, you know, digging their feet or whatever they're doing because they got rewarded for that before. In the video clip that I spoke about on my blog, my dog Stoni jumps up and grabs a rope because it was reinforced before, when I was trying to get her to jump on a cooler. So free shaping it's free. It's a lot less structured. What we do, I don't know that there's a name for it. I would call it layered shaping or efficient shaping, honestly, or intentional shaping. And what we do is we manipulate the environment so that the correct choice for the dog is the obvious choice. What's the advantage of this? The more layers you put into a behavior; the more confidence that grows as the behavior grows. I've seen people who say, “Hey, I got a new See-Saw. And so, I wanna do agility with my dog. I've put my dog over it.” They look like their nails gnarled and they're a little bit worried. Yeah, because there's no layers involved. I've got like, I don't know, 20 or 30 layers to how I teach a Seesaw. There's so many layers that grow confidence leading to the final behavior. So, you get to the final behavior with a lot of confidence. And the difference is if something gets a little bit sloppy, go back to any one of those layers and put more reinforcement in it. And then you've got brilliant behavior. Okay. So, there you have it. - - - - - - Our Website: https://dogsthat.com Facebook:   / susangarrettdogagility   Instagram:   / susangarrettdogsthat   TikTok:   / dogsthat   LinkedIn:   / dogsthat   Pinterest: https://pinterest.ca/dogsthatcom/ Twitter:   / susangarrett   There’s always something new happening at Dogs That, so if you’d like to be the first to know, visit our website, register to receive updates, and we'll keep you in the loop. https://dogsthat.com