pervocracy:

I’ve been watching dog agility competitions on YouTube, because of no reasons, and I noticed something really sweet.  When a dog finishes a course, even if they didn’t win, even if they made a major mistake and got eliminated, the owner always cheers for them and pets them and gives them a toy.

Because if you only reward your dog when they’re perfect, you’ll end up almost never rewarding them, so the dog’s overall experience of doing agility courses would be “there is a 99% chance of being disappointed,” and they’d come to dread the whole activity.

(Yeah, obviously in training you’d withhold rewards if the dog did an obstacle wrong, but even then, there’s something called “shaping,” where you start training by rewarding the dog for doing anything correct-ish, maybe just for walking up to the obstacles, and only gradually raise your standards as their ability improves.)

And it’s not just behaviorism; you also have to keep some perspective that your dog, just to be there and to try the course, has to be extraordinarily talented and obedient.  That’s a good dog, and if they screw up, they remain a good dog, and should be treated accordingly.

This post is, obviously, not just about dogs.