Shaping is a method of training a behavior whereby a dog is rewarded for behavior that is incrementally closer to the behavior the trainer wants. When using shaping, the trainer plays a waiting game while the dog guesses what the trainer wants. The trainer rewards the dog as the dog guesses behaviors closer and closer to the trainers desired behavior.
Dogs are highly motivated by this game of offering behaviors. When they get it right and hear the marker word, dogs get a rush of dopamine prior to obtaining their food or toy. This dopamine rush motivates them to want to play the game again.
Initially, the game must be very easy until the dog is thoroughly invested in and loving the game. Once the dog is hooked on the game, the trainer can gradually add difficulty. As long as the trainer doesn’t increase the difficulty too quickly, the added challenges of more difficult tasks build resilience when the dog has incorrect responses and confidence when the dog gets it right.
Shaping is always used in conjunction with marker training, operant conditioning, and classical conditioning. These principles and tools are the foundation for all that we do for the life of the dog.
Why Use Shaping to Create Good Behavior
Here are some reasons to consider shaping behaviors over using other training methods.
1. It creates a dog who thinks about how he can influence his own environment rather than a dog who allows the environment to influence him.
2. A dog who has learned a behavior by shaping will remember it better.
3. A dog who has been taught by shaping will leave a training session thinking about how he can do better at his next training sessions.
4. A dog who has been taught by shaping need never see the food until after the sound of the marker. This makes for a smoother transition from being food focused to being handler focused.
5. Shaping gives an opportunity for classical conditioning to do its work creating a dog who loves to work.
6. Shaping creates internal qualities such as confidence, resilience, self-control, focus, and motivation.
How Shaping Builds Internal Qualities
1. Shaping creates a dog who is motivated to work because it is fun and the dog is reinforced when he is successful.
2. It builds resilience as the dog works through small amounts of frustration while figuring out what his trainer wants.
3. Shaping creates a dog who is motivated to please his trainer as the trainer nurtures the dog’s love of the shaping game.
4. Shaping creates confidence as the dog learns that “He can do it!”
5. It creates self-control as the dog learns to control his impulses in order to think first and then act rather than to re-act.
Steps for Shaping Behavior
1. The first step in shaping a behavior is to wait for the dog to offer any behavior that is close to the behavior you are wanting.
2. The instant the dog offers any behavior that is remotely close to the desired behavior, mark and reward the dog’s effort. As you are rewarding the dog, try to physically move the dog toward being closer to the desired behavior with reward placement.
3. Get the dog excited about trying again. This time, wait for a little better performance before marking.
4. When the dog is successful. Mark and reward. Try to use reward placement to build muscle memory toward a better performance the next time.
5. If the dog gets it wrong, encourage him to try something new.
5. If the dog’s just sitting there and continues to keep sitting without trying anything new, your dog needs to get unstuck. Move around and play with him a bit. Then start waiting again. He will eventually offer something. If the dog is struggling, mark and reward efforts. Use reward placement to try to get him closer to the desired behavior.
An Example of Shaping
An example might help make understanding the process of shaping more clear. Let’s say we want to shape a dog into sitting with good eye contact for attention. This is a fairly easy behavior to shape. The process is straight-forward.
The first step in shaping any behavior is to wait until the dog tries something remotely close to what you as the trainer ultimately want.
Your dog might start the first session by jumping on you or by exploring his surroundings. We’re going to say that in our example, the dog is jumping. In this case, the first step is to wait until the dog quits jumping.
The instant the dog has all four feet on the floor, say “yes” in a short, clear tone and give the dog a piece of food. This first step requires that the trainer has a good understanding of the basics of marker training. Timing, in particular, is extremely important for marker training and shaping to work.
As you give your dog his reward, use reward placement to accelerate the process. Once the dog gets his first reward, he will likely be eager to earn more. Repeatedly mark and reward the dog as he keeps all four feet on the ground.
The next step is to increase your criteria for reward. Initially, all the dog had to do to earn his mark and reward was to keep all four feet on the ground. During this second step, the dog must now do more. Before marking your dog’s behavior, wait until he either gives eye contact or sits. Then, the instant he does either, mark and reward.
Continue marking and rewarding over and over again as long as the dog maintains the sit and/or the eye contact.
Once the dog is proficient at either holding a sit or maintaining eye contact, it’s time to increase the criteria for reward again. Wait until the dog does both: sits and maintains eye contact.
Mark and reward repeatedly again reinforcing your dog as he sits while maintaining eye contact. Shaping all of this needs to be done in steps and incrementally.
Not all dogs will take the steps in the same order or move along the same path. Some dogs might initially ignore you so that your first reward event would occur when the dog looks at you, even if he’s not close to you.
The dog chooses the path to correct behavior and there are always many paths toward the same end result. The handler simply reinforces the dog as the dog gets closer to what the handler wants.
Tips for Successful Shaping
1. Make training a game and keep it fun. Set a happy tone.
2. Let the dog initiate the work.
3. Give as few hints as possible so as to require the dog to use his mind to figure it out on his own.
4. At the same time, the handler needs to give enough hints so that the dog doesn’t get so frustrated that he looses interest in the game. Allowing a dog or especially a puppy to become overly frustrated can work your training in reverse. It is better to err on the side of setting criteria too low than to risk setting criteria too high.
5. Use luring to build muscle memory before using shaping if the desired behavior is so hard that the dog will not offer a behavior even close to it. Fade the luring as soon as possible so that the dog’s mind is on the marker and on earning the reward and not on the reward itself..
6. Use props (such as a platform) if necessary to build muscle memory. Fade props as soon as possible so that the dog doesn’t get dependent on them.
5. Use other hints (such as body motion or spatial pressure) as little as possible. Use them only as a jump-start to the process when shaping would be so difficult that the dog would get overly frustrated. Fade these hints as quickly as possible to get the dog’s brain back in the game.
6. Be patient with a dog new to shaping. Shaping has to be taught. A dog who is new to shaping will take longer to figure out what to do. Once a dog is used to shaping, he will start offering behaviors much more quickly.
7. Remember, your goal is not initial perfection, but an increasingly better performance.
8. Increase criteria gradually as the dog becomes proficient at the behavior.
9. Set the criteria for reward to be at a level that will challenge the dog to do his best. At the same time, keep the criteria low enough and the game easy enough to keep the dog motivated to keep trying and to keep engaged in the game.
11. Remember that resilience is built when a puppy works through a little failure. However, too much failure will cause a puppy to loose confidence and motivation and possibly to even shut down. Always err on the side of keeping your puppy successful.
12. Be patient. If you are feeling inpatient, quit training and come back to it when you are in a better frame of mind.
13. Do not forcefully say “no” to the dog when he gets it wrong. When training a new behavior with shaping, I simply quietly wait for the dog to do something closer to what I want. When perfecting behaviors, we’ll talk later about a different technique for encouraging a dog to keep trying. There are several ways to handle incorrect responses. Being harsh or even communicating disappointment is never one of them.
14. Reward your dog for effort. If the dog is trying hard, don’t let it go unnoticed. Even if he lacks the perfection you’re hoping for, lower the criteria so he is successful and you can reward his effort while he is performing correct behavior.
The Problem With Silence
Free shaping is a very common method for agility trainers to train new behaviors. When agility trainers use shaping, the trainer remains silent as the dog tries various behaviors until he hits on the correct response and receives his mark and his reward. This method of using shaping works very well for agility trainers. It also works well when first beginning obedience training and if you never want to do competitive obedience. However, down the road, the typical application of silence when shaping can have issues with competitive obedience trainers for two reasons.
The biggest problem with the traditional use of shaping when applied to the competitive obedience dog is with regard to what we obedience trainers want silence to mean to the dog. I don’t want my dog to be offering a host of different behaviors when I am silent in the competitive obedience ring. I want him to understand silence as an indicator of correctness.
The second problem with the traditional use of shaping with a competitive obedience dog has to do with a need to use shaping to fine tune certain behaviors where there are levels of perfection and no clear right or wrong. Examples of these types of exercises include straight fronts and finishes. In this usage, I don’t want the dog offering different behaviors. I want him to offer a more perfect version of the behavior he just performed. Therefore, there must be some way to communicate this to the dog. Again, silence is the problem.
In order to better facilitate learning the skills required in obedience, I’ve made a couple of modifications to the traditional use of free shaping in order to continue to harness the power of offered behavior and classical conditioning while at the same time making it more conducive to the training of the competitive AKC obedience exercises. The first change has to do with training new behaviors to a dog. The second has to do with fine tuning position or increasing criteria.
Early in my dog’s training, I will wait in silence for the dog to try various behaviors. However, as the dog learns more behaviors, I begin to shift from being quiet to using excited chatter instead of silence to tell the dog that he needs to try something new. When he gets it right, I mark and reward.
If you would like to have your dog compete in both obedience and agility and to shape both agility and obedience exercises, the method discussed in this book works fine for agility because in agility, silence has no meaning with regard to correctness. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if your dog’s cue that he needs to try something different is silence or chatter. A dog can be conditioned to understand either system as long as you are consistent with the system you choose.
If you have already conditioned your dog to shaping with silence as an indicator to continue trying different behaviors, it is quite easy to switch to chatting. Simply start chatting when you want your dog to try something different. Most, if not all, dogs will catch on fairly quickly as long as your chatting is exciting to the dog.
