Thursday 3 April 2014

Contacts Re-visited - training in the ring?



Something that I have been thinking about is when dogs are put back on contacts in the ring it is deemed "training in the ring". Some judges will send you out after, others will let you continue.

But IS it actually training in the ring, which quadrant of operant conditioning are you using and what is the dog being trained by this behaviour?

With modern positive dog training techniques being used widely in most training schools these days we use positive reinforcement to get our dogs to perform the desired behaviour within agility.

Take a stopped contact. The dog stops on the contact and we give it some kind of reward - a treat, a play with their tuggy etc. We focus on making the contacts a great place to be and then check our dogs understanding with various proofing methods which usually result in the dog getting a reward for the correct action.

I understand training to be setting a situation up for my dog to do the correct response to which I give him a positive reward.

What happens when we go to a show and the dog does something different to what you wanted it to?

I frequently see people stopping their dog from going further, placing them back on the end of a contact and then either leaving the ring or carrying on.

If it is training lets explore which part of Skinners operant conditioning this may fall under.


Positive re-inforcement - adding something the dog enjoys to encourage that behaviour again. Putting the dog back on the contact and praising (unable to give other type of reward in a competition).

Negative reinforcement - taking away something that was undesirable to the dog. Shouting at the dog and not stopping until it is back on the contact.

Positive punishment - adding something unpleasant to stop a behaviour.  To some dogs this can be something as small as a rebuke. In extreme cases it is a physical reprimand. So if you tell your dog off for jumping off the contact you are using positive punishment for that action.

Negative punishment - taking away something that the dog is finding rewarding. Stopping the dog from continuing on the course which it is finding rewarding to place it back on the contact.

So now you have considered which quadrant of operant conditioning you may be using on your dog when putting them back on contacts in the ring, lets look at what we have possibly trained the dog. I say possibly as I suggest the dog is not actually learning what is trying to be taught.

Picture the perfect stopped dog walk contact - drive up, along and down the 3 planks until the dog reaches the bottom where it stops confidently waiting for the release command.




Consider the approach, your position, the next obstacle and your position in relation to the next obstacle. The dogs strength both physically and mentally in its understanding. What is going on in the next ring, where the judge is and any other external circumstances. Is the perfect stopped dog walk contact really an easy decision for a dog to understand and make?


When your dog missed the stop did you realise you were flailing your arms and out of position? Did you see the dog race through the tunnel in the next ring? Did you notice your dog loose it's footing slightly along the down plank? Just a few observations and any one of these plus a hundred more could make your dog fail in its performance.

Once the contact is missed and the dog brought back everything has changed. The dog will not be moving at the same speed, you will be in a different position etc etc.

Nothing will be the same.

Are you teaching the dog to cope with the things it failed on or have you just given your dog a whole different picture to deal with? Will your dog understand it failed or maybe it will think the process is to leap off and then rush back to be put back on?

I have no answers to these questions, no golden pill for getting contacts once a dog gets confused with them in the ring. I too have stopped a dog when I felt it did not understand its criteria. I believed in that instance more confusion would arise if my dog continued to fail without me having opportunity to break the behaviour down and then use positive reinforcement to regain understanding.

A few years ago Mark withdrew Kodi from competition for several months to go to shows where he could take a toy with him into a ring and help Kodi understand his job better. He had been marked for a high contact at a main event. If it wasn't good enough for the judge then he needed a better performance. The following year he won his final 2 tickets and was made up to Agility Champion Bekkis Carbon Copy :)

In contact sessions at our club we used various proofing methods around the performance in an environment where if the dog gets it right it can have a jackpot reward and if the dog fails it can try again with the same distraction or with a slightly lesser distraction. An example is throwing a football along the ground as the dog comes over the apex of the Aframe. If the dog fails it can be changed to just having the ball dropped or thrown after dog in position etc until dog can learn to maintain criteria even when the ball is thrown.

Those are examples of what I consider to be training.

Below is a lovely run that Rhyme gave me where I rewarded his criteria of waiting for the release with an exciting ready, steady go that he has learned to love. Is it training in the ring or just reinforcing the behaviour I want in a testing environment?




As I said I don't know that I have the answers to the questions I have raised so your comments and own thoughts are appreciated.

If you are struggling to think of ideas of how to up the anti in training environments where you can train your dog successfully to avoid the need to think about replacing your dog on contacts please drop me an email and we can see if we can arrange a training session or two :)



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