A few weeks ago, I posted a blog called “Reward or Reinforcement? Which are YOU doing?” because I think sometimes handlers often think about giving a reward rather than leveraging reinforcement. How “rewarding” is done because we think we should do it (or the instructor told us to) and “reinforcement” is done in order to increase the likelihood of something happening again in the future… which got me thinking about accidental reinforcement… and ultimately how accidental reinforcement can jump up and bite you in the rear end.

What do I mean by “Accidental Reinforcement”?

Well it’s not accidentally dropping a cookie on the ground when you feed… Accidental reinforcement is either something that we do (an action) or something that the dog encounters in or about the environment, that can contribute to the dog to repeat something in the future. Actually, let’s go with the dropped food example because I think my other recent blog called “Let’s Talk Behavior Chain” applies. Let’s say that you let your dog scavenge dropped cookies from other dogs before your dog eventually alerts on the hide. Then you give your dog a little piece of cheese and call it a day. What reinforcement happened here? Well, to a small extent your dog earned a piece of cheese which can be fairly important depending on the dog, but along the way the dog rehearsed self employment and gained a lot of enjoyment snarfing up things on the ground. You have now built Snarfing into your dog’s searching and you can expect lots of snarfing in the future! Scavenging is a highly reinforcing pastime for dogs!

Accidental reinforcement doesn’t even need to be food related. Let’s talk about another common scenario. In this case, let’s say we are referring to handlers working unknown number (or a range) of hides. Very often dogs will start to check in when all the hides have been found within the area that has been actively searched. This is consistent with the same sort of check in behavior that often occurs in blank areas. As the handler starts to recognize this behavior, they start to lean on it and rely on it. They start calling “Finish” when the dog looks at them. This may or may not be followed by a cookie but the dog understands that you are happy (generally) when the search is over. This is enough to be reinforcing. Fast forward, the dog starts to look at the handler sooner and sooner in the search and POOF the team starts to miss hides.

Accidental reinforcement can also occur as a result of training mistakes or lack of clear criteria… Pawing at the hide is a common example that comes to mind. In this case the dog reaches the hide and isn’t sure how to communicate. If there is any inconsistency in what they have been reinforced for in the past (or because of too much repetition…), you might find that through either enthusiasm or frustration, they throw a paw into their indication. The handler in this case is often at a loss and are so fearful for not feeding an indication at odor that the dog gets paid for a paw. That is usually the start of a problem and it can quickly turn into the dog’s preferential alert behavior especially if the handler is struggling to read the dog (a paw is easy to read). Now the handler has a problem!

Accidental Reinforcement isn’t the end of the world

Sometimes “stuff” happens. The important thing is to recognize the cycle of reinforcement and change your approach so that what is being reinforced no longer gets reinforced. The hard part is recognizing that the issue that you are encountering is probably due to something that you have built in, and in some cases you may need another eye on you to help you to identify your patterns and to figure out how as a handler you are facilitating accidental reinforcement.

It’s also important to realize that no trainer or handler is perfect…. and accidental reinforcement can sneak by the most astute of us! Sometimes it’s obvious… like when a squirrel fell out of the tree directly into Powder’s path… that was HIGHLY reinforcing and not something that I could have anticipated. And sometimes all it takes is thinking “I am not reinforcing that” to avoid the problem to begin with (demand barking comes to mind!)

Training is a Craft. It’s not a recipe. It’s not something that you can read out of a textbook and apply without practice. And it is definitely different with every dog you work!