# Recalls - a different twist on rewarding



## JE-UK (Mar 10, 2010)

I love when I come across a training nugget that makes a lightbulb go off in my head. I have endless respect for creative, inventive trainers, as I am neither. 

I was reading an article recently by a police dog trainer who uses only reward-based methods that has really made me think about my recall proofing.

I practice recalls ALL THE TIME. I probably average 25 recalls even on a slow day. Some recalls get a "GOOD dog!", some get a treat, some get a ball thrown, some get a release to go back to whatever was so interesting, some get a treat AND a release. When my dog recalls snappily off of something he is finding really interesting, I may jackpot him, i.e. sprinkle a jackpot of treats on the ground. My thinking ... harder recall, better treats. He has a great recall, but I am neurotic about it. Plus I regularly walk in a park with lots of teenager-generated fast food trash, so our distraction level is high every day.

But the thinking of this trainer is that you never want the dog to be in a position of being able to guess the worth of your reward by increasing rewards for increased difficulty, so that he's not weighing up the relative worth of what you might have on offer against something really REALLY fascinating. At some point, even dumping a whole bag of really good treats on the ground is not going to be as rewarding as the fascinating thing. 

His method is to occasionally jackpot for really EASY recalls, and to randomly skimp on the "payment" for the really hard recalls, the thinking being that you want the dog not knowing what to expect, which combined with the randomness, makes for a faster, keener recall. I LOVE this idea! I have to rethink my methods.


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## Hayley22 (Sep 21, 2011)

That's a really interesting idea! I think the basic idea is the randomness - so there may be a reward, there may not, and your dog wants to find out! But I never thought of making it so random that even where there is a high distraction, there may be no reward. it completely makes sense, though, because one may find oneself in a situation where there are no treats at hand, but it is imperative that one's recall works!


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## tortoise (Feb 5, 2012)

Yes, it is very effective.


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## Arcticfox (Dec 12, 2011)

Sounds like slot machine psychology. Random rewards with occasional jackpots = addiction to gambling. Casinos fund extensive research on this to find out exactly the right ratio to create maximum profit. Same principle is used to train rats in behavior studies. There are operant boxes that dispense treat pellets for lever presses, and the number of lever presses is gradually increased and becomes semi random after initial training. There have been rats that press the lever over 100 times to get one treat pellet before giving up!


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## outwest (May 1, 2011)

This sounds like a great idea! I am going to try it with mine, too. In our trick class today she had far too many treats and didn't want all of her dinner. If I make it random, she won't eat so much, either.


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## tortoise (Feb 5, 2012)

Arcticfox said:


> Sounds like slot machine psychology. Random rewards with occasional jackpots = addiction to gambling. Casinos fund extensive research on this to find out exactly the right ratio to create maximum profit. Same principle is used to train rats in behavior studies. There are operant boxes that dispense treat pellets for lever presses, and the number of lever presses is gradually increased and becomes semi random after initial training. There have been rats that press the lever over 100 times to get one treat pellet before giving up!


Yes, this is where the words "slot machine" and "jackpot" made it into dog training lingo. You are completely right.

The random reward schedule is very effective. Some trainers mix different kinds of treat together to amplify the effect.


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