AUDIT - Reward Placement Matters: Smarter Training By Design

Audit - Reward Placement Matters: Smarter Training By Design

 Taught by Mariah Hinds

Mariah Hinds is back for another series of workshops.  Mariah, owner of Mariah Hinds Dog Training in Charlotte, NC and a Fenzi Dog Sports Academy Instructor.  Mariah visits us regularly, both as an instructor and a competitor in our matches and trials and provides a wealth of information and assistance to our members.

This class will emphasize 3 areas: 1) Understanding reward strategies  2) applying reward strategies by design to strengthen behaviors and 3) applying reward strategies to fix what we have inadvertently weakened.

The structure of the class will be 4, two hour sessions on Tuesdays.  We'll start off with theory but move rapidly to all teams working and practicing the ideal reward locations for various skills and exercises.  As the classes progress, we'll run it a bit like mini-seminars with handler and dog teams cycling through short one-on-one sessions with Mariah to work on specifics for that team.

The rationale for for training with awareness of reward placement and reward strategies:  Behaviors drift towards where reinforcement is received. If we always reward stays out of position then eventually we could lose our stay behavior. If we always reward the dog for heeling ahead of heel position then we could eventually build forging into our heeling. Rewarding in different locations for different behaviors can strengthen our behaviors and promote accuracy or it can weaken our behaviors. 

Join us to discover where and why we should deliver the reinforcement. We will discuss the ideal reward location for heeling, retrieves, figure 8s, fronts, finishes, stays, out of motion behaviors and distance behaviors such as go outs, cone wraps, position changes and jumping. We will also discuss the pros and cons of using different location specific reward markers to tell the dog that they have earned the reward and can access the reinforcement at a particular location. 

This workshop is great for competition teams and for dogs who have a number of foundation behaviors on cue.  

Auditors would not bring dogs.

GCOC Members  $50.00

Non-Members  $60.00

Instructor: Mariah Hinds