Review: How Dogs Learn
By Mary R. Burch, Ph.D. and Jon S. Bailey, Ph.D.
1999 Hardback,
Howell Book House
The scientific foundations of dog training are becoming one of the most hotly discussed subjects among dog trainers. Suddenly we have advanced beyond motivation and compulsion and are beginning to fling around terms such as variable ratio schedule of reinforcement .
How Dogs Learn is one of several books which have emerged that are devoted to the science of dog training. It is written to describe how dogs learn and how to understand and use scientifically proven training principles such as operant conditioning.
Understanding these basic training principles is especially important to trainers involved in highly specialized fields because often we must invent our own training methods. There is a very distinct lack of manuals on How to Train a Poaching Detection Dog , for example! If you truly understand how dogs learn, you can train virtually anything the dog is capable of.
This extremely readable book begins with an interesting history of the scientists who formed the foundation for animal training as we know it today. It goes on to introduce the people who shaped the art of dog training over the past century, beginning with Colonel Conrad Most, the German author of Training Dogs (the original compulsion trainer s manual), and proceeding to Karen Pryor, the former dolphin trainer who has popularized clicker training for dogs.
The authors go on to discuss reinforcement: what dogs like, what they want to avoid, and what they ll work for. While it may sound basic, this chapter provides a wealth of useful training information. That chapter is followed by one on extinction: the If I ignore it, it will go away theory of training; then another on punishment: Stop that right away or I ll kill you!
Chapter six focuses on stimulus control: how to get the dog to understand and obey commands with speed and precision. The next section explains classical (or respondent) conditioning, and how it can be used to solve problems such as fearful behavior. How Dogs Learn concludes with a section on shaping (teaching new behaviors) and an overview of training methods including clicker training, extinction, differential reinforcement, and punishment.
I highly recommend this book as a way to expand your knowledge of dog training and greatly increase the number of training tools that you have available to you. Burch and Bailey have accomplished a seemingly impossible task by making this wealth of scientific information easy and enjoyable to read.
On this same topic, I highly recommend Excel-erated Learning by Pamela Reid, Ph.D., and Don t Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor as well.
