Kathy Sdao Seminar Notes: The order is everything!

And by order I mean the sequence that behaviors, clicks and reinforcers happen.  This was one of the lessons in the "What Not to Err" seminar that really blew my mind and while I will try my best to relate why this is important, I will admit that some of the technical definitions and reasoning behind this flew out of my brain.

The concept that I did grasp though is that your reinforcer or positive event should always follow the behavior. That seems like a "well duh!" kind of thing. But in classical conditioning, what ever happens 2nd (can't remember the techy word for that) and the emotion/gut response to that 2nd thing happening, will start to infect the first thing - and that can be a good or a bad thing. 

Past fosters Salish and Apple await their "reinforcers"

So you think of old Pavlov. Rings a bell, feeds the dog. Rings a bell, feeds the dog. Pretty soon the bell stimulates a response of excitement and salivation before the food is even present. There is an expectation for that second thing. These responses - salivation and emotion - are things that happen automatically and Pavlov succeeded in attaching those automatic responses to something that had nothing to do with them normally - the bell.

Classical conditioning is happening all the time though, with positive and negative results. Okay, so here's an example of how I was totally screwing myself by messing up sequencing.  I've got a dog who's about to go to the vet and is not real social. In an effort to link the vet experience to good things, I start treating before we go into the vet. I give high value treats while at the vets. Then they examine the dog, stick him with a couple needles and off we go. So the order of things were 1) yummy good thing and then 2) scary vet and getting stuck by a needle. The emotions from that 2nd thing can attach themselves to those yummy treats and you can actually poison those treats from being quite so enticing, especially if the treats precede too many scary happenings.

Scared foster pup Zia at the vet wanting to get the heck out of there

A good example that Kathy gave is the person who always gives you a compliment just before they talk to you about something they think you are doing wrong. It doesn't take long before as soon as you hear them say something nice, your stomach drops because you know your about to get hit with criticism.

A better option for the vet scenario would be to follow the vet with something that your dog really enjoys: say a walk or a meal, a puzzle toy in the crate on the drive home, etc. Then the wonderful thing follows the not so wonderful and hopefully some of the joy from the follow up will attach to the vet's office if every time they go to the vet, something wonderful happens afterwards.

Think about all the ways you can manipulate timing to make not so fun things seem a little less daunting to your dog! How about always doing nail trims right before a walk? Bath time before dinner?