Avoidance conditioning in dog training is looked upon with skepticism and apprehension. This is due to people not understanding the psychology behind it. In a study published in 1960 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology titled Learning Resistance to Pain and Fear: Effects of Overlearning, Exposure, and Rewarded Exposure in Context. By Neal Miller. Here the experimenters trained motivated rats (hungry rats) to run down a small alleyway. The first group was exposed to a small electric shock (competing motivation) when they got to the food, this shock was gradually increased throughout the trails habituating the rats to the pain and fear of getting the food reward. Another group of rats who were not habituated to the shock did not run as fast to the food. The shock motivation was at a high enough level to deter them from running as fast as they could to the food for fear of being shocked (Miller 1960).
This is classical conditioning. This is what is done in avoidance conditioning in dog training, with one small variation. The punishment for the dog cannot put your dog into a fight-or-flight drive. This is counter to what you are attempting to accomplish in training in addition the time and level must be perfect otherwise learned helplessness can take place, thus shutting your dog down. The idea is to give a high enough adverse fast enough so the dog stops challenging it. This can only be done after the dog knows the command, what a correction is, and how to avoid it. That is why we dog train in steps, we do not skip steps and we follow the plan because it gets results. If you want real results contact us today
What is Avoidance Condition in Dog Training
In Lameman terms avoidance conditioning is the act of teaching a dog to avoid a punishment (more on punishment later). We do not want to spend the rest of our dogs life giving correction, we want to condition the dog to think if they break a command or do not comply with a command a correction is coming. The practices is in line with LIMA remember LIMA stands for Least Intrusive, Minimally Aversive. This means giving a dog two or three strong advisories and never again, is far better then a life of constant corrections.
Avoidance Conditioning Example
When we are housebreaking or working on habitation with a dog that has a habit of grabbing items off the floor they are not allowed we will put on an E-Collar set it at a moderately high level and wait for the dog to grab the shoe off the floor as soon as they grab it the get a correction on the E-collar. It only takes 2 or 3 times for this to happen and the dog is now conditioned to know if I grab that this unpleasant thing will happen. It is better that I do no grab it. They are now conditioned to avoid the shoe.
Another example of this is teaching a dog how to “Heel”, after completing Phases 1, 2 and going through Escape conditioning 3rd phase we teach the dog how to avoid all corrections for the Heel. So we have the dog in the Heel command we are walking the encounters something highly motivational like a cat running, the dog breaks from the Heel. We give a motivational level of correction on the E-Collar. The dog corrects its self we praise give love and keep walking, we then jump up 10 points on the collar (this is to avoid the dog getting accustom to the nic). The next time the dog breaks under a similar circumstance they get another nic. We repeat this until we find a motivational enough level so the dog stops challenging it.
Why How Does Avoidance Conditioning Work
Avoidance Conditioning only works when the dog first understand the command and how to escape the correction it is getting. You cannot simply put in an E-collar on a dog and expect them to know what to do when they break from a command and get a correction. They will push the dog into fight or flight and no learning will take place, and in some cases the dog will redirect onto the handler. Negative side-effects happen when not using an E-collar correctly. Avoidance conditioning works because we are tricking the dogs brain to think it is going to experience something unpleasant when it breaks from the command. Its because a conditioned response. That is why one must generalize training, the dogs response to an e-collar when its adrenaline is high say in a high state of arousal in prey drive chasing a cat as compared to someone knocking on the door. For an in-depth video explanation of avoidance and escape learning click here.
Cited
Miller. N LEARNING RESISTANCE TO PAIN AND FEAR: EFFECTS OF OVERLEARNING, EXPOSURE, AND
REWARDED EXPOSURE IN CONTEXT. Yale (1960).