Clean Run Magazine - September 2007 - 66

Pooches Painting Pictures: Operant Conditioning for the Uninitiated By Terry Ryan, CPDT, photos courtesy of Terry Ryan I first got the idea about having dogs create art from long-time friend Lonnie Olson, founder of Dog Scouts of America. The Dog Scouts call this activity the “art of shaping” and it can earn a merit badge. The goal: Train the dog to happily wear a cloth “paint mitt” on one of his front feet. A small sponge is attached to the bottom of the mitt with Velcro. The sponge is dipped in various colors of non-toxic tempera paint. The easel is a plain metal cookie sheet with art paper taped to it. The dog makes beautiful strokes of color with the mitt. This summer I adapted that exercise to format a vocabulary and learning theory lesson for my Japanesespeaking students. Through painting with the dogs, my students were able to discuss and practice rewardbased training in general. Specifically, through this painting exercise, I was able to strengthen their knowledge of and mechanical skill in these important areas: The click of clicker is a conditioned reinforcer. It marks a behavior and promises to reward it. We use food as a reward, a primary reinforcer. Preceding a food treat with this acoustic marker makes the click a good thing—this is classical conditioning. We’ll practice creating that association by repetitions of click, treat. This practice is called magazine training or loading the clicker. It makes no difference what happens before, after, or during the click. The click always predicts, comes before the treat. behavior or task analysis, how to identify the small components of a more complex behavior. This discussion will help us with the selection of criteria for reinforcement. We will learn to be splitters, not lumpers of criteria for reward, breaking each Next, we will discuss behavior into as many small steps as necessary. We’ll use systematic desensitization to get the dog used to having his front foot touched, then touched with the painting pad, then wearing the painting pad. Separately we’ll also use systematic desensitization for the sound of Velcro and then for the smell of paint. Meanwhile, as an entirely different exercise, we will shape a targeting behavior. Targeting is teaching the dog to place a certain body part on or in a predetermined location. Another example of targeting we train at Legacy is cued when the doorbell rings. The dog’s rear must make contact with a strategically placed carpet square. This stations the dog when the doorbell rings. In shaping, we’ll observe and catch and mark a behavior that is an approximation of our goal. Catching a behavior is sometimes known as opportunity training. We’ll reward a lesser goal at first and, little by little, accept and reward better attempts. We won’t stay at any step longer than the 80% success rule (8 of 10 tries are successful) or the dog might not want to move on to try something different, since what he is currently doing so reliably makes the reward happen. The dog must touch his front foot to the paper. 66 Clean Run | September 07

Clean Run Magazine - September 2007

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run Magazine - September 2007