Luring is the process of showing a reward (usually food) to a dog and then enticing the dog to follow the food in order to guide a dog into certain positions. The dog follows the lure into position and then has the opportunity to have the food as his reward.
What Does Luring Accomplish
Luring is a super tool for building the habit of muscle memory. Muscle memory is the ability to do a task without putting much mental thought into it. It is teaching your muscles to do something automatically. An example of muscle memory for humans is riding a bike. Once the skills necessary to keep a bike upright are learned by our muscles, our brain no longer needs to think about keeping the bike from tipping.
Luring is a valuable training tool for the initial training of complicated behaviors or for teaching behaviors that a dog will likely not offer on his own. Luring is a tremendous technique for jumpstarting the training of new behaviors. However, for many reasons, a lure should be used only for the short term. If luring is used for too long, it will create a food focused dog. Our goal is a work focused dog. Therefore, don’t let your dog get dependent on a lure.
What Does Luring NOT Accomplish
Though luring is a great tool for teaching muscle memory, luring does not get your dog’s mind in the game and because a dog is not thinking about the work his muscles are doing, it is not the best place to reinforce particular desired behaviors. The dog must mentally associate the reward with the behavior he is being rewarded for if positive reinforcement is to take place. When luring is used, the only thing the dog is aware that he is doing is following the food. The trainer is reinforcing food focus, not focus on the work.
If the dog will offer the behavior without being lured into it, it is better to use a different training technique called shaping that we will discuss in a later chapter.
An Example
For example, when training a dog to sit with a lure, many trainers will hold a piece of food above the dog’s nose. In order to get his head up to obtain the food, the dog will likely sit. If the dog happens to put his butt on the ground as he follows the food, he will probably not even realize what position his butt is in. Further, he will not make the connection that it was the sitting that brought the reward. It is more likely that the dog will think that following the food is the behavior that he is being rewarded for.
From the dog’s perspective, he earned the reward for doing nothing more than focusing on the reward itself. Food focus is being reinforced; not handler focus. Further, the sit is not being reinforced if the dog is unaware that he sat.
Luring is a Form of Bribery
For positive reinforcement to do its work, there must be a reinforcement. A lure is not a reinforcement. It is a bribe.
There are two primary differences between a bribe and a reinforcement: the timing of the presentation of the reward and the effects of the reward.
A reward that comes in the form of a bribe is always presented before the behavior, whereas a reinforcement should not be presented until after the dog has earned it. Bribing is a form of negotiation. It’s like saying, “Here’s this food. If you do what I ask, I’ll give it to you”. Reinforcements are simply a reward for doing what is asked when the dog doesn’t know if there will be a reward or not.
Maximize Luring
Though luring is a method that we recommend fading as soon as possible, there are a couple of tips that will help you get the maximum learning from those times when luring is necessary to build muscle memory.
1. Hold the food in such a way that encourages the dog to drive into your hand while at the same time giving you enough control over the food that the dog can’t get it until the dog has moved into the position you want him in.
2. Mark the behavior when the dog is in the desire position. After you’ve said the marker word, release the food so that the dog can have it.
Fading the Lure
Once the dog has performed a behavior a few times and enough muscle memory is built for the dog to offer the behavior without following the lure, it is time to begin fading the lure. Begin shifting the reward from being a lure to a reinforcement.
We’ll do that by waiting for the dog to offer behavior without bribing the dog. After the dog offers behavior, then we’ll present the food in the form of what is called “reward placement”..
