Pat Miller Blog
A good year for foxes at Peaceable Paws!!!
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME!!!
Shaping workshops are always great fun, and this one was no exception! We started with six dogs and handlers and one auditor – but one dog went home early because he found the environment too stressful. The remaining five pairs explored lots of new behaviors and had a ton of fun.
What is Shaping?
“Shaping” means breaking a behavior down into small pieces and starting with the first bits, reinforcing successive approximations (steps) until you have built the whole behavior. It is a great way to teach complex behaviors as well as simple ones. It works best if you actually sit down and write out your whole shaping plan before you begin, so you know what small behaviors you are looking to reinforce. If you’ve never tried it – and if you’re not using it in your training programs, I strongly suggest you give it a try!
There are several different shaping techniques:
FREE SHAPING
The purpose of Free Shaping is to develop a large repertoire of behaviors that your dog will then be able to offer when you’re shaping a specific behavior. It involves simply marking and treating your dog for any behaviors and is often done as Karen Pryor’s “101 Things to Do With a Box.” The one rule is that you can only reinforce three times in a row for offering the same behavior – then you wait for a different behavior. (If they come back to that behavior later you can reinforce it again.) It’s important to remember - any behavior can be something as small as glancing toward the box, leaning toward the box, taking one small step in the direction of the box… And sniffing one corner is a different behavior than sniffing another corner or sniffing the middle. We also use it for “101 Things to Do With a Prop,” – same idea, but using a variety of props instead of boxes. Remember that you do this without a behavior goal in mind – you are not trying to get the dog to jump in the box or push the toy grocery cart. At least not until you have established a large repertoire of behaviors with your dog. Then you can start shaping a specific behavior.
LURE/PROMPT (DIRECTED) SHAPING
Lure Shaping involves using a lure or prompt to help the dog understand what you are asking her to do. We use this a lot in our group classes. It can help you accomplish your goal more quickly – for example, lure-shaping your dog to lie down by putting a treat in front of her nose, gradually moving it toward the floor, and clicking and treating as she gradually moves lower and lower until she is all the way down. You certainly could do this using Pure Shaping (see below), and we would probably end up with a lot of frustrated dogs and humans if we tried to do Pure Shaping in our basic training classes, with people who may not yet have a lot of the training skills needed to be successful with shaping.
PURE SHAPING
With Pure Shaping, you have a specific behavior goal in mind, and you don’t do any luring or prompting. There are some trainers who insist dogs learn behaviors much better through Pure Shaping, and that this is the only legitimate way to train. Our friend Bob Bailey of Chicken Camp fame (and much more) says “Rubbish.” He agrees that shaping is a great training option, and that animals can learn behaviors just as well using other methods, including luring. ( https://drbobbailey.com/) Pure Shaping does encourage a dog to offer behaviors rather than waiting for you to show or help her with luring, so it certainly does have some advantages, but it is by no means the only useful game in town.
Karen Pryor’s 10 Modern Principles of Shaping
It is helpful for your shaping success to know and follow Karen Pryor’s 10 Modern Principles of Shaping:
1. Be prepared before you start. Be ready to click/treat immediately when the training session begins. When shaping a new behavior, be ready to capture the very first tiny inclination the animal gives you toward your goal behavior. This is especially true when working with a prop such as a target stick or a mat on the ground.
2. Ensure success at each step. Break behavior down into small enough pieces that the learner always has a realistic chance to earn a reinforcer.
3. Train one criterion at a time. Shaping for two criteria or aspects of a behavior simultaneously can be very confusing. One click should not mean two different criteria.
4. Relax criteria when something changes. When introducing a new criterion or aspect of the skill, temporarily relax the old criteria for previously mastered skills.
5. If one door closes, find another. If a particular shaping procedure is not progressing, try another way.
6. Keep training sessions continuous. The animal should be continuously engaged in the learning process throughout the session. He should be working the entire time, except for the moment he’s consuming/enjoying his reinforcer. This also means keeping a high rate of reinforcement.
7. Go back to kindergarten, if necessary. If a behavior deteriorates, quickly revisit the last successful approximation or two so that the animal can easily earn reinforcers.
8. Keep your attention on your learner. Interrupting a training session gratuitously by taking a phone call, chatting, or doing something else that can wait often cause learners to lose momentum and get frustrated by the lack of information. If you need to take a break, give the animal a “goodbye present,” such as a small handful of treats.
9. Stay ahead of your learner. Be prepared to “skip ahead” in your shaping plan if your learner makes a sudden leap.
10. Quit while you’re ahead. End each session with something the learner finds reinforcing. If possible, end a session on a strong behavioral response, but, at any rate, try to end with your learner still eager to go on.
The Workshop
We started Saturday morning with six dog-human teams and one auditor: Lucy and Gordie, Laura and Winnie, Joann and Scarlett, Terri and Maya, Lacey and Teddy, and Linda and Eve, with Natalie auditing. Gordie had to leave Saturday morning – he was a client’s dog that Lucy had been working with and it turned out the workshop environment was too stressful for him – so Lucy just helped coach for the rest of the weekend.
The weekend of fun included:
· Free Shaping, first with boxes, then with props – and eventually a selected behavior with the prop
· Shaping body parts (a head turn, a paw movement…)
· Shaping a paw touch to make an Easy Button talk, or a light button to turn on and off
· Shaping either Reverse or Go Around
· Shaping a behavior of the trainer’s choice
Here's what the whole weekend looked like:
And here are some of the results:
Maya doing 101 Things to Do With a Box.
Gordie doing 101 Things to Do With a Box.
Winnie doing 101 Things to do With Winnie the Pooh.
Eve doing 101 Things to do with a baby cradle.
Shaping Maya to push a grocery cart after doing 101 Things with it.
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THE BEAUTIFUL WORLD AT PEACEABLE PAWS AND PASTURES
Flowers, wildlife and a hike with the Kelpies... the beautiful world around us always puts a smile on my face…
Coming Soon at Peaceable Paws
I cannot believe it is June already - hope you are planning a great summer! Several interesting private clients coming up this week: a Catahoula mix with stranger reactivity/aggression; a Shiba Inu with aggressive behaviors – biting family members as well as strangers; intra-family aggression with 2-year-old German Shepherd littermates. And then… our Aggression Academy starts June 9th. Lots going on – as always!
Warm Woofs,
Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA
www.peaceablepaws.com ; info@peaceablepaws.com ; 301-582-9420