“And The Most Powerful Reinforcer For Your Dog Is…”
At Doggie Adventures and Training our training methods are reward based which means we reward the desired behavior and either ignore or redirect the undesired behavior. By definition behaviors that are rewarded will increase. Some ways that we reward the desired behavior is with with food, toys, play, verbal praise, and more. I find that 95% of the dogs that I work with prefer food over other forms of reinforcement. Why does food work so well for most dogs? In the early 1900’s Ivan Pavlov inadvertently discovered the power of food for dogs while trying to measure the amount of saliva a dog produced when they tasted meat powder. He discovered that the dog would begin to salivate when Pavlov’s assistant would enter the room with the meat powder even before the powered was given to the dog. The dog learned that the assistant had the powder thus creating
