Content
- Stimulus control in canine training
- What stimuli can we use for training?
- Food
- words and gestures
- Because it's important?
O stimulus control in dogs it is truly useful in canine training. It will help us make the puppy respond positively to the orders we teach him, to a concrete sound or physical gestures. Basically, stimulus control allows the dog to respond in a certain way to an indication from us.
Humans use this system too: we answer when a phone rings, get up when we hear the alarm, or exercise when our trainer tells us to.
In this article by PeritoAnimal, we will teach you how it works, what you need and what advantages training has to do a good stimulus control. Keep reading and learn from us!
Stimulus control in canine training
Stimulus control is fundamental in dog training. All orders of canine obedience (verbal or physical) must become stimuli that control certain behaviors of your dog. For example, if you ask your puppy to sit, he should sit and not lie down.
On the other hand, many situations in everyday life also act as unconscious stimuli that control your dog's behavior. For example, if your dog is on the mat, he shouldn't pee. On the contrary, if you are on the street you can do it.
Karen Pryor proposes in her book "Don't Kill Him" that you can know if your dog's behavior is under the control of a stimulus if it fulfills four properties:
- The behavior occurs immediately after the stimulus. In theory, the behavior always occurs after the stimulus, but in practice situations can happen where the dog "fails". Even highly competitive dogs can sometimes fail.
- The behavior does not occur if the stimulus does not occur. This is true, but there may also be other stimuli that control behavior in certain situations. For example, your puppy will never go to dressage sessions or a competition track unless you order him to, but he can do something when he is in your house without any order.
- The behavior does not occur in response to another stimulus. For example, your puppy does not sit down when he hears the command "Down". As in the previous case, order may be the control stimulus in circumstances related to training, but your puppy may sit in response to other stimuli in other situations (when he is in his spare time).
- No other behavior occurs in response to this particular stimulus.. If you ask your dog to sit down, he doesn't jump, lie down, run away, bite you, pee, scratch, etc.
Below you can see some examples of the application of stimulus control in canine training.
What stimuli can we use for training?
Food
When using food to train a dog, it is often guide the dog with the food. For example, to get the dog to sit down, you take the food over the dog's head and back a little bit.
These procedures are very useful because they allow you to train simple behaviors in a short amount of time. However, many trainers guide with food many times, until it becomes part of the stimulus that controls behavior. So trainers think that food-trained puppies only respond when food is present.
The mistake is in using food as part of the stimulus at all times. To avoid this problem, it is enough that the food is no longer part of the stimulus after a few repetitions. Keep in mind that food should be used as a reinforcement and not as a background. Find out more about positive reinforcement in our article.
words and gestures
This should be our main objective: for the dog to relate an instruction with concrete words or gestures. In general, dogs are more likely to remember when they observe physical gestures, but you can use what works best.
The first times you are teaching the order, you must use the food so that the dog "receives its reward" for having fulfilled what we asked of it, but as in the previous case, at some point it will have to stop using this reinforcement to reward it. with kind words or caresses.
Because it's important?
Having good control of the stimuli that influence our dog's behavior is very important for your safety. Being sure that our puppy will obey us in an exceptional situation, gives us security and confidence. Training is also important for mentally stimulate our dog and make him feel useful. It's basically another way to enrich your daily life.
Ideal for dogs...
- smart
- Active
- nervous
- obedient
- shy
- with behavior problems