Puppy Club Fact Sheets
Reward & Punishment for Your Puppy
Introduction
You may think your puppy should obey you because it loves you! Unfortunately, however much your puppy loves you, he still assesses each situation and thinks "what do I get out of this?". There are two ways of convincing our puppies to do what we want. We can reward good behaviour and punish bad behaviour. Remember, as far as your puppy is concerned there is no obvious good or bad behaviour just good or bad consequences.
Rewards
To a dog, lots of things in life are enjoyable and can be used as rewards. Food is a strong reward, as is playing, going for walks, chasing squirrels, human contact and chewing - the list is endless.
What each puppy finds the most rewarding varies with his character. In training, the two rewards most commonly used are food and access to favourite toys, as they are obviously easier to control than producing squirrels on cue for them to chase! Two rewards we haven't mentioned are praise and patting. These are quite weak rewards and to most dogs just signal that nothing bad is going to happen, rather than being highly rewarding in their own right.
When starting to teach any new trick, it is important to reward every successful attempt. However, once a behaviour is well established, move to a schedule of intermittent reinforcement i.e. sometimes the puppy gets a treat - sometimes he doesn't. This makes the behaviour stick far better than rewarding every time. It is the difference between putting money in a drinks machine, as opposed to a slot machine!
Punishment
Bear in mind that just as rewards differ from dog to dog, so do things that are considered punishment. For instance, for a lot of puppies being pushed away from people is considered a great game, rather than a discouragement! For some dogs, shouting just makes them excited while for others even a stern look will send them cowering to their bed!
The decision on when and how often to use punishment is a personal one. Remember dogs do not have any idea about right and wrong, just about good consequences and bad consequences, so it is only fair to punish if you are sure they can tell which action brought about the bad consequences.
The problem with punishment is that it only temporarily suppresses the bad behaviour. The behaviour is likely to return in such a way that punishment is less likely i.e. "stealing food off the table in front of the owner gets me yelled at, next time I'll wait till she is not looking!" In other words it just teaches the dog to be more careful.
The best way to use punishment is to suppress behaviour and use the temporary lull to train another behaviour. Punishment will also work if the dog has never tried and succeeded at that behaviour before.
If the very first time your puppy steals food you yell at him before he gets a chance to eat it and do the same the next ten times he tries to steal food, he will probably decide that stealing food is no fun. However, if during that time he succeeds in stealing food he will know it is worth persevering and will learn to discriminate when it is safe to steal!
Severe physical punishment should be avoided as it can terrify a dog causing him to resort to aggression, leaving you with a far worse problem than you started with. Bearing in mind that in most cases the dog is not deliberately being bad and has just misunderstood the situation, is it really fair anyway?
Markers of Reward and Non-Reward
One big problem with both rewards and punishment is timing. Dogs make connections only between events that happen within 1-2 seconds of each other so to be effective rewards or punishments need to happen within two seconds of that specific event. One way to get around this is to use markers.
A commonly used marker of reward is a clicker (a child's toy that make a distinctive click). The idea is that the dog knows that a click means a treat is on its way. That click marks the exact behaviour that earned the treat and bridges the gap between the behaviour and the reward.
With punishment a sound or word can be used to warn the dog that the specific behaviour is undesirable. If the behaviour continues, the dog is punished, but if on hearing the word the behaviour stops the dog is not punished. Basically the dog gets a warning to show which behaviour is unacceptable and is given the opportunity to correct his behaviour. It is important that the cue word is given at the very start of the behaviour, almost as he starts to think of misbehaving, so the dog does have a chance to change his mind.
Even more effective can be using markers of non-reward. Instead of punishing the dog we simply signal that his behaviour means he won't get the reward he was expecting. A specific phrase or gesture such as 'too bad' or turning your back. The idea is that they shouldn't be unpleasant in themselves, but they mark the specific behaviour that resulted in the dog not getting his reward. This is a very clear method, and in some ways more effective than punishment. Not getting what you were looking forward to is very upsetting!'
