How Dogs Learn ?
It is interesting to know that dogs and wolves learn by exploring their environment and using their senses to increase and expand their knowledge of sight, smell and taste.
Let us take an example – let us image a dog in a forest and suddenly it hears a rustle in the nearby bush. It then smells a body and then a rabbit appears from behind the bush. The dog chases the little animal, kills it and eats it. As an outcome of the whole episode, the dog learns that he will get to eat if he chases and kills the rabbit.
Here we can identify the following –
- Stimulus – the rustle sound, smell and sig of the rabbit. - Response – the Chase and kill. - Reinforcement – the delicious meat.
So the same manner can be used to make dogs learn.
For example to teach the COME command, we provide the stimulus as a voice command or a hand signal and reinforce the response by a treat. This make the dog understand that coming back to us on such a signal is beneficial for him (as he gets a treat) – so he learns to respond to the command.
We can say that reinforcement is the most important factor in dogs learning approach, with any reinforcement a dog will never be keen to learn.
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