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Duolingo Knows Dog Training? Keep Motivation UP by Being INSTRUCTIVE
If a dog is making multiple mistakes in a row in your training process, you need to take a break and ask yourself whether you’re making the solution clear enough for her. A common example where I see this happen is when teaching a Stay. If the dog breaks from the Stay position, some trainers will overemphasize the mistake, first by giving the dog too strong of a verbal correction and then by repeating the process over and over as the dog keeps getting up and getting more confused and/or stressed with each mistake.
It’s much better to make the Stay easier (shorter time, shorter distance, or less distraction). Then reward those easier trials and BUILD on SUCCESS with gradual increases in difficulty. Dogs will learn from mistakes quickly if you show them the correct solution and reward them for it right away. That’s exactly what Duolingo does and I’m convinced the app was built by scientists who understand reward and motivation psychology extremely well…1:48
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1 Reply
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Great observation and share, David! It makes me think of all the times I’ve used “free-shaping” and how tricky it can be, to wait for the dog to come up with some other idea. Some dogs have really low tolerance for frustration and that latency between reinforcements can be super short but still very frustrating. If we pivot quickly to a lure in that moment (showing them the answer), we could reduce frustration for sure.
I’d love to hear from other trainers on thoughts about “showing the dog the answer”… when do you think this could be useful and how might you keep the dog motivated through a training session with this idea?
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