Operant Conditioning- How I Taught My Dog to Bark

Operant conditioning is a learning technique used by many psychologists and is a little different than classical conditioning. While classical conditioning is a type of learning where an organism learns to associate stimuli and therefore elicits a conditioned response, operant conditioning is where the organism forms an association between behaviors and resulting events. This tool is not only used by psychologists, but also anyone who decides to teach their pet how to perform a trick. Shaping is used in order to guide the animal to perform a desired behavior. This ultimate behavior might be the dog rolling over. However, it would probably take a lot of time and would be extremely frustrating to teach a dog by simply instructing it to “roll over” without any other assistance. By just saying “roll over”, the dog isn’t going to know what the means or what you want them to do. Teaching through successive approximations can help guide the dog from a standing position to the rolling over motion through multiple steps.

Positive reinforcement is another tool that can be used to get an animal to perform a desired behavior. When the dog exhibits a desired behavior, you give it a treat. Since dogs love treats, this is considered a positive stimulus. Now the dog has associated the action her or she performed with getting a treat, it will increase that behavior to continue getting more treats. Now, let’s get back to how successive approximations would work. In order to get your dog from a standing position to rolling over, the first step to take is to instruct it to sit. Once the dog sits, you can give it a treat. Then, you can work on getting your dog to lie down. Once it does, give it another treat. Now, you can work on teaching it to roll over, giving it a treat after it lies on its back and then again after it fully rolls over. Now, when you tell the dog to roll over, it will know the behavior you want it to exhibit.

I used a similar process as I explained above when I was teaching my dog to speak. Ever since she was 8 weeks old, she didn’t bark at all unless she was scared. It was crucial that I taught her to speak whenever she needed to go to the bathroom. She would simply stand or sit at the door. On occasion, she would bark or growl softly, but it wasn’t loud enough that I could hear from very far away. You can imagine that we had a few accidents when she was a puppy when I wasn’t paying attention to her and didn’t know she had to go out.

Once I knew she barked a little when she was waiting at the door, I was constantly watching her. Whenever she would walk over to the door, I would wait to see if she’d bark. When she did softly, I would give her a treat, praise her, and take her outside. I did this a few times and her bark grew a little louder. After a day or two, she would begin to bark when I was no longer standing right there at the door with her. I’d give her a treat for barking and take her outside. Then, her barks got louder, to the point where I could hear them when I wasn’t even in the same room. Since I rewarded her after she barked and then took her outside, she associated the barking behavior with the event of me taking her out and then rewarding her afterward. Now I know when she needs to go out wherever I am in the house. She hasn’t begun to bark in response to anything else so now I know exactly what she needs and when she needs it. Operant conditioning was a very easy process, especially since my dog picked up on it so quickly.

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