Blogspot - Companion Animal Psychology

Scientists find out which rewards dogs will run faster for, and the results explain why you need to use good treats in dog training. Photo: Dora Zett / Shutterstock Modern dog trainers use positive reinforcement to train dogs, and that reinforcement often takes the form of food (see the ultimate dog training tip  to find out why). When you want a dog to come when you call them, you want to use your best training treats as a reward. But scientists have paid surprisingly little attention to what dogs consider worth working for – until now. A recent paper by Dr. Stefanie Riemer et al, published in Applied Animal Behaviour Science , looks at the relative effectiveness of quality and quantity of reinforcement as measured by how fast dogs run to the bowl they can eat it from. Pet dogs were trained to run along a walkway that was 20 metres long in order to obtain food. The type of food (quantity or quality) was shown by the containers that were visible to the dog from the st...

Everyone who has a dog needs to teach them how to behave. But why do many people still use methods that have risks for animal welfare? Photo: Corey Terrill/Shutterstock A new paper by myself (Zazie Todd) looks at the barriers to the adoption of humane dog training methods by ordinary people. To understand how people make decisions about dog training, we need to understand people’s attitudes to different methods and what influences them, as well as people’s knowledge and technical ability in using those methods. Humane dog training methods use positive reinforcement and negative punishment. They are also known as reward-based methods, positive reinforcement, or force free methods, and they basically involve giving or withholding rewards contingent on the dog’s behaviour. There are many reasons to use humane methods rather than aversive ones (which, technically speaking, are positive punishment and negative reinforcement ). The use of reward-based dog training methods is...