How Do Dogs Learn
Dog Behaviour Training in Sydney
All dog behaviour training starts with understanding your dog.
I’ve been offering dog behaviour training in Sydney for years now and the most important step towards having a strong relationship with our dogs is to truly understand how they perceive the world around them.
They aren’t human so we can’t communicate with them the same way we do with each other. This is something I feel many dog owners forget. You can’t build a strong bond with your dog unless you understand how they think, feel and learn. It’s not about us and how we see the world, we need to be able to put ourselves into our dog’s position. Thanks to ongoing studies and research, the understanding of our dogs is improving every day. It’s making it possible for us to understand better how their mind works and how we can better train them.
Luckily for us, we now understand far more about dogs’ senses and how they experience the world through them than we used to. Unfortunately there’s still a lot of old fashioned dominance trainers out there. We also understand a lot more about how dogs communicate with each other (and us) using their own unique body language.
Understanding the world through your dog’s point of view and learning how their mind works will make you a better dog owner.
Training your dog from your dog’s point of view makes you a more proficient teacher. Being able to understand your dog’s canine language will help your communication and improve the relationship between you two. As the more advanced species, it is up to us to learn to ‘talk dog’ rather than expecting our dogs to learn English.
Whenever we consider how dogs think and learn, the point is to realize they are not human – all though it might sometimes feel like it!
We know from our on-going studies that dogs don’t speak our language and they don’t experience the world like we do. This is what my dog behaviour training in Sydney focuses on. To be able to train a dog, we must understand their point of view and train them respecting their feelings and thinking. Dogs do not learn in the same way that we learn, nor do they think in exactly the same way as we think.
Dogs learn through experience
Dogs learn through visual and scent cues. When it comes to social behaviour, dogs observe body language and sniff each other to get information. Smells can tell them a lot about the other dogs’ health, age, gender etc. They also use verbal communication, like barking, crying, growling, but much less so than we do. That’s one of the reasons why dogs usually learn body language a lot faster than they do verbal commands. (The other reason being that our timing might not be correct for the dog’s learning, but more about that later). Dogs are every good at observing human behaviour and gestures, and they learn fast to associate certain behaviour with different outcomes. This helps them to predict our behaviour. This is why it sometimes seems like they understand more than they actually do.
Dogs can also learn from other dogs through social learning.
And they can also learn through a process called conditioning. Psychologists such as Pavlov have studied dogs in behavioural conditioning. This is the basis of modern dog training today.
Classical and operant conditioning in dog training
Let’s go over some dog training basics next…
‘Classical’ conditioning can be useful in giving a positive association to a potentially negative object, for example a nail clipper or harness.
This means connecting a positive thing, like a treat, with something a dog has negative feelings towards, like a harness.
This would mean showing a harness before giving a treat. This will hange a negative feeling into a positive one which will affect the behaviour in a positive way.
‘Operant’ conditioning techniques are what we mostly use in dog training today.
Operant conditioning is shaping voluntary behaviour by connecting a reward with a certain act, like getting a treat for sitting.
There are two classes of techniques for modifying a dog’s voluntary behaviour
- Reward dog training (positive reinforcement, negative punishment)
- Aversive dog training (negative reinforcement, positive punishment).
Based on operant conditioning principles, we can either shape a dog’s behaviour by adding or removing a reward, or we can change a dog’s behaviour by adding or removing an aversive stimulus i.e. something your dog doesn’t like.
A reward can be food, cuddles, play, toys, freedom to roam, walks, basically anything your dog loves. An aversive stimulus can be a collar correction, an electric shock, an unpleasant sound, etc.
How and what dogs learn is highly dependent on timing, when a stimulus is applied, and how often a stimulus is applied.
Generally, it’s good to apply the reward or aversive stimulus as close to the target behaviour as possible time-wise. This will teach the dog the exact moment they got rewarded or punished for.
Studies also tell us that we do not want to over-correct our dog. If we use an aversive stimulus too often, our dog will get used to it and it will no longer be effective. Scientific studies have also proven us that the use of punishment based training techniques don’t work long term and worsen aggressive responses.
But we do not want to reward our dog too frequently either, or they may learn to expect a reward every time, and not be motivated to give their best effort. By rewarding a dog too often, we might end up raising one who only obeys treats, not the owner. So training is not just about giving treats, fading them out is an important part of the training!
Classical and operant conditioning in dog training
Eazy Dog Training runs obedience and agility classes and puppy preschools in Inner West Sydney. I also offer private home dog behaviour training in Sydney. Call me today to book your first lesson!
