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Reinforce fear and stuff

2K views 21 replies 8 participants last post by  lalachka 
#1 ·
So, last night I was at the park and they were shooting fireworks so every time one went off i'd mark and treat. He didn't look scared but I wanted to go a step further and associate it with something positive.

So a trainer saw me do it and he said that I shouldn't, that this just rewards something unpleasant. I know that you can't reinforce fear but the way he explained it also makes sense. Confused now

He said, imagine there's a song that's associated with something bad in your life, so every time you hear it you will get an unpleasant feeling. So it's the same with fireworks, let's assume he's scared, you're rewarding that state of mind.

What did I do wrong? I shouldn't've marked? Just treated? Shouldn't've treated and just redirected?
 
#6 ·
what I generally see with dogs that are fearful, say of fireworks, they stress, they aren't going to take a 'treat' at the time of stress, if he was taking those 'treats', than I wouldn't consider him 'stressed' or 'afraid'..but that's just my opinion
 
#7 ·
He probably wasn't. I'm hoping he wasn't)))))
But now I'm curious about the concept of it. When giving food after something unpleasant happened (let's assume it was unpleasant) am I rewarding his feelings of unpleasantness?

Should I stop reading into my dog lol? I want to understand everything about him)))))
 
#8 ·
What about you can't reinforce fear did you not get? Let me ask you a question. Let's say you're afraid of spiders. Every time you see a spider someone threw a hundred dollar bill at you. Chances are you're going to feel better about seeing spiders because getting 100 bucks alters your mood rather freaking quickly.

There's a whole system of training by Bart Bellon called nepopo where unpleasant feelings signal reward. Kind of disproves his theory.
 
#11 ·
Tyson shys away from trucks. He gets very nervous of buses too and he is absolutely terrified of sewer grates. I do not know what to do around the trucks but i am thinking of using treats. The sewer grates are another issue, someone told me to force him over but the approach i am taking is to have him play ball around a grate and do fun activities then eventually put his ball on a grate and encourage him to take it. I think that is my best approach. I cannot see anything wrong with what you did.
 
#12 ·
I'm thinking the trainer might have saw your dog was uncomfortable and stepped in. I would not have given treats, babied, or corrected the dog. A good example of treating and not associating with bad behavior...a dog that jumps never gets a treat unless all four feet are on the floor .
 
#13 ·
Yeah buses and trucks is something I have to fix. It bothers me to see him scared.

I wouldn't force over. I did a few times, like forcing him to something he's scared of and then read and it's a bad idea. The example was (my favorite Michael Ellis lol), if you're scared of heights and someone drags you to the top of the cliff and is like, look, this is amazing, nothing to be scared of, you'd still be scared)))) probably even more

I messed it up, he said it much better
 
#18 ·
I kind of agree with the person that told you not to do that. Your dog is eating, your dog is fine. The dog is not having trouble with the fireworks, so just ignore it. Praising the dog for not having trouble with the fireworks is kind of like suggesting the dog should take notice of them.

And while it should not create fear of fireworks, it could make your dog anticipate treats, and become anxious, insistent, you hear the big booms, where's the liver???

I think that sometimes we anticipate issues that we have heard of, and we either set the dog up to see if they have that issue, or we go right to working to avoid/remedy the issue, that we can actually increase some less than desirable habits. People are too dependent on treats. Dogs should not think that every time they run into something new or different someone is going to shove something yummy at them.

If you do that, when you get your dog into training, when you are trying to lure a dog to learn something new, the treats you are working with have less effect, because they are over used. I think the reason the best trainers have the total focus of their dogs is that they use praise and treats and toys effectively and efficiently in training.
 
#20 ·
Selzer, thank you. I like this idea of not using treats for everything.

And I def do expect issues and set him up. and yeah, I should've made it a non issue. Problem is that every day I have hundreds of questions that come up, little stuff like this. So I make what I think is the best choice and almost every time it turns out to be the wrong one.
Nothing about training is common sense. Lol either that or I have none
 
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