With this week’s #TrainingTuesday 🎓📝📓 we’re continuing our focus on puppy TACOS 🌮 TACOS is an acronym used within the Karen Pryor Academy (KPA) for foundational dog behaviors that we’ve adapted within our puppy raising program. The fourth letter in TACOS is O, which stands for Offering and Operant.
We want our puppies to be eager to explore the training environment and offer new behaviors. The dogs learn that in some training contexts, especially a formal training session, we want them to act first or “offer” behavior. We don’t want them to stand around waiting for us to cue them or to be lured. Training is a dialogue between the learner (dog) and teacher (person), not a series of one-way instructions.
Using clicker training, our trainers will then be able to click and treat any number of behaviors based on what they are trying to teach the pup in that session. In shaping, we can click the puppies for small behaviors that eventually progress to a more complex goal behavior. In our example, Patriot is being shaped to put his head through his harness.
The puppies learn that their own movements or actions will earn them
reinforcement. This is the hallmark of operant conditioning. An “operant” dog understands that his own behavior drives consequences. Actions ‘make’ the click and treat happen. The pups will then continue to offer the behaviors that they believe earned those clicks and treats, allowing us to start adding a cue to pair with the goal behavior. Through clicker training, we can teach many new cued behaviors while having fun with the pups!
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Regional Sales Manager Bausch + Lomb Pharmaceuticals
4dThey were the sweetest pups!!!