[Jessica Oncken]

Some great practices put in place. Would love to see more talk about schedules of reinforcement and double blind scenarios. The dogs can pick up on cues from the person recording as well if they know where the aids are. Slowing of the breath, moving the hand to write something down all of these things can easily fall under the Clever Hans Effect as well. The dogs pick up on way more than we think.

[Jessica Oncken]

Active avoidance can only happen once the dog truly understands the contingency for the punishment. Meaning the dog truly understands the command. If you are having to repeatedly correct then they need to go back to learning the command either via escape or positive reinforcement. If the dog doesn’ truly understand the command you are adminstering a non-contingent punisher and can lead the dog to start to shut down because it does not truly understand what is being asked of it. Like with punishers Skinner states “the mere presentation and rate of the reinforcer is much less important than the contingency of which it is a part.” I invite all to read Skinner, your world will EXPLODE! You can go to his site and read his books for free! Contingencies of Reinforcement is my all-time fave.

[Jessica Oncken]

So a condition Punisher is the same as a conditioned reinforcer in that or a bridge if you would. A condition Punisher tells the dog if you keep doing this you’re going to get your primary Punisher. So in reward training we say good dog and give them or we click and give the treat whichever that the good dog in the click is your conditioned reinforcer and Punishment you know you have leave it you can use a certain other word and that means if you don’t stop then you’re going to get your other Punisher your actual punisher. It’s still avoidance conditioning it’s just got an extra step in it. Think about when you’re training a dog on an invisible fence. When the dog gets close to the perimeter it gets a beep and when it keeps going it gets shocked the beep is a conditioned Punisher saying if you don’t stop moving forward you’re going to get shocked

[Jessica Oncken]

I LOVE the way you were able to get the breakdowns. A few things that I would add ESPECIALLY if doing oils. Container type. Material ie qtips, cotton ball, cloth. Amount of odor. Exact time each odor was placed. If there was wind for outside the direction or if inside if there was a fan. Also, we want to know IF the dog threw a change at what time and then what time the dog went to final response. Also, if the dog is on an intermittent schedule of reinforcement log if the dog was paid or not. Might want to consider doing double blinds at times but this would require an intermittent schedule where the dog doesn’t get any reinforcement when it responds and IDK if you are there yet as it is a tricky schedule to achieve. Also who placed the aids. The name of the trainer. You may see the dogs performance is affected when aids are hidden by a different trainer. I see a column for response…does that include false responses and misses? Also, the age of the aid. You may find with different odors in different containers with different material that the odor is on all that I said above you will see even more details about the dog and can improve from there. IE time change thrown to time of final response….if there is a difference you’ll be able to find out why and train to fix that. If on intermittent schedule see if the dogs performance changes at certain intervals or if you are possibly not making it as intermittent as you think. I was just trying to figure out how to make something like this with the pie charts so you can get exact PCDs PPVs etc and get them on specific scenarios to better see the dogs deficiencies. When it comes to narcotics and explosives there are some more things that need to be added. I don’t see any trip wire finds. I also don’t see if you had searches where the door was closed and the dog cleared the door as that is a real life scenario. I would also put out some other distracting odors like clean fishing line (trip wires) different types of plastics even blank blasting caps etc as we want the dog distinguishing. Containers and age of aids are very important with explosives as in real world they may have old components. I don’t see any really inaccessible hides. Also with explosives time change throw to time final response is HUGE!!! That can be a life saver. I don’t see if any were done in the dark with a flashlight and a filter which can happen. For narcotics there need to be a lot more details as PC can be easily torn apart with the things that are lacking….I think you are for sure on the right track, I just know from experience with my father training, searching and also going with him and talking to lawyers and reviewing cases with him. There are some things that extremely lacking and it may just be that I am not seeing the whole document. The numbers are great but without the details I mentioned you can’t show how you would know why the dog FRs and therefore can’t show how you remedied the issue. I am so glad to see my fathers record keeping influenced you and you are so on the right track. If you want to get together I can go over where and why things need to be added especially if you are doing a working dog. I can’t wait to get with you and make this thing make your dog bullet proof in court! Awesome job!