What is Positive Reinforcement?

When you hear the term "positive reinforcement" what comes to mind? Treats? Being nice? Nothing because you do not have the slightest idea what it means? In this episode, we break down what this term actually means, why that is important and how positive reinforcement, as a training technique, not only works for dogs, it works for all animals...including people.

Speaker:

Dianna L. Santos

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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to the It's Time to Train Your Dog podcast. In this podcast, we'll be talking about all things dog training, how it is that we can help our dog be the best family companion possible, training tips, tips from your instructor and professional trainers, and much more.

In this episode, I wanted to dive into what exactly positive reinforcement training is, just to help you have a better understanding of what that term actually means and how it applies to training our dogs. Before we start diving into the podcast, let me do a very quick introduction of myself.

My name is Dianna Santos. I am the owner and lead instructor for Family Dog University, Dog Sport University, and Scent Work University. These are three online dog training platforms. They all offer online courses, webinars, seminars, as well as regularly updated podcasts and blogs. I've been training dogs professionally since 2011. I specialize in working with dogs who are fearful, reactive, and aggressive. I also have a fair amount of experience working in the dog sport world, particularly with Scent Work. I've also been a trial official and worked for a competition organization. You know a little bit more about me. Let's dive into the podcast.

When people first hear the term positive reinforcement, there's a lot of different things that can come to mind, particularly if you're not a training professional, particularly if you aren't geeking out on animal behavior or dog behavior. When I used to do orientations for basic obedience classes or basic manners classes, those orientations would be with just the owners. The dogs wouldn't be in the room. It'd just be a way to help everyone understand what it was that we were going to be doing over the next couple of weeks.

One of the first questions I would always ask is, "What is it that you think positive reinforcement usually means? What is that term? What does that mean as far as dog training is concerned?" The first thing everyone would say is treats. I'd be like, "Okay. But what does that mean?" They're like, "Oh. Well, you give your dog treats." I'm like, "Okay. But why are you giving your dog treats?" "Oh. Well, because you love them." Or, "Because maybe they did a good job," or, "Well, that's because my trainer told me to." But the main thing was that there was not a real understanding of what positive reinforcement means.

That's not to say that these people somehow were in the dark, or how dare they not know. For most people who are out in the world, there's no need to know that for our day-to-day life. It's not as though someone's popping out of the bushes saying, "Give me a good definition for positive reinforcement now, stat." That's not happening. What I wanted to do in this podcast episode is just give you a very quick breakdown of what that term actually means, and why is it we use it for training not only our dogs but all variety of animals. Actually, it applies to people, too.

At the core of it, I think what we need to realize is that the term positive reinforcement is actually a scientific term. It's not using the most common ways that we understand those terms. What I mean by that is the word positive is actually seen as adding to. It doesn't mean good. I hope that part makes sense, is that a lot of people hear positive, and they go, "Well, that means that it's good." Not necessarily. When we're talking about the term positive reinforcement, what we're saying is positive means to add to. If you had negative reinforcement, it would be to take away. Think of it like math. Positive is adding to.

Then when we think about the term reinforcement, when we're looking at it from the scientific standpoint, that means that we are strengthening something. When we put those two words together, it means that we are adding something to strengthen something. In our realm of dog training, what that means is that we're adding something to strengthen a behavior. Hopefully I haven't lost you yet.

But what we can see just from this really quick breakdown, this is drastically different than what most people think positive reinforcement means. A lot of people just think that it's good, and you're just throwing treats at it, and that's it. It's actually a lot more complicated than that. What we're trying to do with positive reinforcement is we're trying to add something to our training to strengthen a particular behavior that we like. In layman's terms, I want to find something that my dog enjoys so that ...