Reprinted with permission from http://www.PositivePetzine.com
Reinforcers should be given immediately. Sometimes this means you have to use a word or sound (such as a 'clicker' in Clicker Training) to mark the behavior, then follow up with the reward immediately. There is nothing magical about the clicker, it simply allows you to accurately mark the response you wish to reinforce.
Not all good behavior should always be rewarded. At first, every instance of good behavior should be rewarded. As our dog gets really good at performing the good behavior, we can start to reward less often. However, be aware that the behavior will go away if the rewards go away completely.
In new or more challenging situations we should be sure to reward good behavior. Just because our dog will 'sit' every time he is asked at home, doesn't mean he knows how to do it at the park with a whole lot more distractions than he is used to. It is not disobedience, it is almost a completely new behavior! And new good behaviors need to be rewarded.
Some behaviors are really hard for our dogs to do or understand. We need to start off by making those behaviors really easy. When our dog gets good at the easy version, we can start making it just a little harder. Then we stop rewarding the easy version and reward only the slightly harder version. We can keep making the behavior harder and harder this way until we get the behavior we really wanted all along.
