Heuristics of Reward and Punishment History

In this episode, Jerry Bradshaw discusses:

What a heuristic is and how it applies to rewards and punishments.
Allowing for mental development during your training.
Training multiple commands for the same actions.
Differences in training obedience and detection.

Key Takeaways:

Histories create biases. You also need to understand your dog’s temperament and how they are going to generalize behavior.
You do not need to perfect the behavior you are training all at once. Allowing time between working on a skill often allows for mental development.
“All the time” and “never” are going to create problems. You need to find a balance in your training.
A variable reward scheme is the key to balanced training.

“if you’re struggling with that call off, what you’re lacking is balance. If you wait too long to create that behavior, you can also have some problems, because you’ve created such a reward history. Dogs that have out problems have a reward history that is massive in terms of biting and possessing the bite equipment or biting and possessing the decoy.” — Jerry Bradshaw

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