Let’s talk about Reward vs Reinforcement in a searching context.
The difference matters! And it matters because one is something you give and one and something that can actually improve your dog’s performance. A Reward is something in your pocket that you give your dog when they find the hide. (This also includes food on the hide if you choose to “pair” though that is not the context I am referring to).
A Reward can be food or a toy. It is what the dog receives. It’s odd thinking about a toy in this way but we will get to that!
Reinforcement is something that increases the chance of a behavior or outcome in the future. Translated, this means that a Reinforcement makes my odor obedience and performance better. Reinforcement builds MOTIVATION. The trick is that reinforcement is more difficult because you have do something that the dog finds reinforcing…. which means that you actually have to engage with the dog and not just be a walking treat pouch. That takes Skill… and it is something that so many instructors just don’t teach (I do by the way if that isn’t clear!)
Reward is a WHAT. Reinforcement is both a WHAT and a HOW.
When we “Food Reward” which is in parenthesis because that is what it commonly is called…. even though what we REALLY want is “Food Reinforce”, it’s easy to get hung up on WHAT you give your dog. When you try to get better performance you can end up in the Arms Race of Nosework where you are constantly trying to give your dog something better. This is one of the greatest fallacies of the sport! Why? Because it’s only half of the equation.
This becomes obvious when we swap the words to “Toy Reward”. Would you ever just hand your dog a ball or would you PLAY with it? Unless the dog TRULY just wanted to hold the toy it becomes a kind of a silly picture because we generally and naturally gravitate to playing with the dog with the toy…. Playing with a Toy is actually “Toy Reinforcement” even though it’s incorrectly often called “Toy Reward”.
But yet…. people so often hand a single cookie (or something else in their Arms Race of Nosework) to their dog and say “Find More”. And because handing a cookie (or hot dog or steak or whatever) is just a “Food Reward”… there is no real potential for increase in performance. You MIGHT get a blip up with a newer and more interesting treat… because in the Arms Race of Nosework, the dog feels a fleeting sense of excitement at something new and better… but don’t be fooled because it’s not sustainable. You will always be in an arms race. And it’s NOT about quantity… 1 treat or 4… because that is still about the WHAT and you will STILL always be escalating… because you are rewarding, NOT reinforcing.
Instead, think about how Reinforcement is BOTH a WHAT and a HOW. HOW you deliver the cookie impacts future performance when you ALSO use a cookie that the dog likes. HOW could mean massive praise and connection. It could be added personal play. It could be letting the dog chase the food in your fingers or any other sort of food play. (HINT: What you do in training does NOT need to be what you do in a trial. Training is Training. Trialing is Testing.)
This concept is SO MUCH more clear with toys but when we talk about food, I usually see folks talk about WHAT to give the dog and they rarely pay any attention to HOW they do it.
Don’t get into an arms race. Learn HOW to reinforce. Oh yeah…. this is how you train a dog with negligible food or toy motivation… more on that another day!
Just to prove a point, this is a demo video that I did with Why, my 13 year old Miniature American Shepherd…. because I don’t just train high drive Labs! This is Food Reinforcement in a way that Why perceives as Reinforcing. He is getting a plain chicken sausage dog treat from Costco here.
