“You should still give your dog a treat even when they get it wrong.”
“You should always reinforce your dog’s effort.”
“Always give a treat when your dog opts out.”
…or should you?
We live in a culture so rooted in punishment, and that can be seen throughout the history of dog training. There has been so much progress towards a kinder (and more effective) way of working with animals without all of the risk and potential fallout that comes from aversive stimulation. Sometimes nuance gets lost in quick sound bites that feel a lot better than “ignore the unwanted behavior” or “correct the mistake so your dog knows not to do it.”
I thought it might be fun (lol – this should tell you something about what I enjoy) to go through some of the quick sound bites you might hear as advice for what to do when your dog makes a mistake in a training session and end with the strategy I tend to use.
“Don’t give a treat, so they know that is not the correct behavior.”
I understand the thinking behind this if you are trying to clarify which behaviors are the right ones and fear that giving treats for the wrong ones may confuse them. Providing clarity for dogs in training sessions is a worthwhile pursuit.
However, when you withhold reinforcement for the wrong behaviors, the overall rate of reinforcement in the session drops. When your dog is performing the behavior that their learning history and current conditions tell them will lead to reinforcement but reinforcement is not showing up, your dog is experiencing extinction conditions … and they feel like crap. Just think about how you feel when you open an app on your phone, and it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do (I want to scream as I press and tap furiously). Those are not the feelings you want to capture in your training environment (also, we just don’t want dogs to feel like that when they work with us).
Plus, while you wait for your dog to try to come up with the right answer, your dog is still practicing the wrong behaviors in the conditions where you want the right ones to show up. There is a very real chance you are going to find yourself having to clean up what you trained in the end (which often means starting over).
You could definitely make an argument for withholding a treat following a mistake every once in a while for some dogs in some situations, so I am not saying that this is always a problem. But as a general strategy, it kind of sucks.
“Always give a treat to reinforce your dog’s effort.”
