I will be discussing the topic of shaping for this post. Shaping can be defined as reinforcing behaviors that are closer to a target behavior through a process of successive approximations until a desired or targeted behavior is reached. I have a dog that has been a part of my family since I was four years old. I remember when I was young that my parents wanted to teach her to do tricks when we offered her a treat. I remember that the first they wanted to teach her to do was sit. When they first tried to teach her nothing happened and my dog would just stand there and look confused and eventually get worked up and upset because she was not getting the treat. I can recall my parents making fools out of themselves falling on the floor trying to show my dog what they wanted her to do. Eventually my dog either began to catch on her just so happened to sit down and she was rewarded with the treat. After this attempt my dog began to sit more and more frequently until as soon as she saw the treat she would immediately sit down. We then repeated this process with teaching her to shake and it went far faster than teaching her to sit did. We used successive approximations and rewarded my dog when she completed a behavior that was similar to the one that we wanted her to complete until she finally did what we wanted. We clearly underwent the shaping process to alter my dog’s behavior when she sees a treat.