Why Do So Many Repetitions?
April 29, 2020
For a dog to truly learn and understand a behavior you have do it over and over and over and reward them each time.
This is called reward history and I have a simple way to explain it and a nice little visual courtesy of my great drawing skills. A piggy bank. You put your spare change in it and eventually you can cash it in, right? Every penny adds up. Each time your dog successfully completes the behavior he is rewarded with food or praise. Every reward adds money to the jar, increasing the reward history.
Each behavior has a piggy bank. Sit, down, walk on leash, come, etc. Each jar needs to be full for the dog to completely understand that behavior. The
If you were to stop when the piggy bank is partially full, like on the left, your dog would not be reliable or proficient with that specific behavior. Let’s use “come”. Imagine if your dog gets out of the house and runs off. Since you haven’t filled the jar, he keeps running when you try to call him back. The fun of exploring outweighs the few repetitions you’ve done with “come”. You don’t have enough reward history of him coming when called.
Now if you have a full jar like on the right he knows what is expected any time you say “come”. If he runs off and you say “come”, he will come running back. You have plenty of reward history.
You don’t get to choose when the jar is full. It’s totally up to your dog. You will start to notice as your dogs jar fills, though. They will respond faster and more reliably.
Don’t stop rewarding your dog when their jar is full. You should still reward them randomly for completing what you ask. This is a totally different topic that could use its own post, but I wanted to mention it here.
Have fun training!
