When shaping, we typically face the challenge of trying to raise criteria and get a better, more advanced version of a behavior while still keeping the dog engaged and interested during the process. If you raise criteria too soon and decide to only reinforce ‘better’ versions of a behavior you run the risk of the dog getting frustrated, getting confused, and giving up. Or, if it’s a Border Collie, trying 10,000 different variations so quickly your head will spin! Been there, done that, repeatedly. Apparently I’m a slow learner! These outcomes are not helpful in any way to the learning process. If you don’t raise criteria and continue reinforcing the same behavior at the same level you get stuck and don’t make any progress. Your dog has become convinced, by your continual reinforcement, that this is your ultimate target behavior, and changing that perception is extremely difficult.

So you don’t want to raise criteria too soon, but there’s also danger to staying at the same place too long. What do you do? There’s a third option, introduce a pay scale to your shaping sessions! A pay scale will allow you to make progress towards the target behavior while avoiding the issues that can occur when your rate of reinforcement falls too low.

If you go more than 3 seconds without reinforcing something in a shaping session then there’s a problem. Your rate of reinforcement is too low. With a really experienced dog and trainer I might stretch that to 5 seconds, but that shouldn’t be the norm. If you don’t see anything happening that meets your criterion then you’ve set it too high. You’re waiting for too much and likely to start to see some of the unpleasant side effects I mentioned earlier. I believe that this is why people, and dogs, give up on shaping. It seems like a no win situation to them.

So what is a pay scale and how does it work? A pay scale is a predetermined plan regarding how much you will pay for any particular behavior in a shaping session. As an example let me talk about the retrieve class I’m teaching right now. We are in the earliest stages of introducing a retrieve object to the dogs. Our target behavior here is the ‘take’ (put your mouth fully over the object and close it). At this point dogs are offering many things such as nose touching it, opening their mouths close to the object, opening their mouths over the object, and closing their mouths over the object.

Rather than setting criterion at only reinforcing, say, an open mouth over the object we could approach this task in the following way instead. Nose touching the object earns 1 cookie. Opening the mouth close to the object earns 2 cookies. Opening the mouth over the object earns 3 cookies. Closing the mouth over the object earns 4+ cookies! And jackpots are encouraged at any time for breakthroughs and better efforts.

We have considered all the major possibilities that the dog is likely to offer in a session and assigned them a value on our pay scale. Every effort gets reinforced at some minimal level, so the issue of frustration and low rate of reinforcement is no longer a concern. We are showing our dogs, by higher levels of reinforcement, that the value of their behaviors differs with some worth much more than others. This makes the entire process a big puzzle for them to figure out, and most dogs love the challenge of a mental puzzle.

The typical approach of one cookie for a behavior that meets criteria is actually a pretty dull and boring way to go about the task. It’s clear that many dogs choose to opt out of this sort of training session. Predictability is not only boring, but a fairly ineffective way to build new behaviors. Using the variability of a pay scale makes the entire task more interesting and gives the dog an opportunity to learn without decreasing motivation.

When your dog is regularly offering behaviors that earn 3 or more treats at a time then you can reset your pay scale to make that your baseline. So, nose touching an object or opening your mouth close to it no longer get reinforced. Opening your mouth over the object now earns 1 cookie, closing your mouth over it earns 2, and then we would add our next target behavior of duration to the hold and pay with 3 or more cookies for keeping a closed mouth on the object for longer periods of time.

If at any point you see your rate of reinforcement drop too low, or your dog seem uncertain or confused, you can always revert back to a previous pay scale for a session then move up to the newer one again.

The use of a pay scale requires the trainer to make an instantaneous decision about how much to pay for every single repetition. So you have to always be 100% focused within a session. This will make you a much more observant trainer very quickly! You can’t go on autopilot and just dole out a cookie here and a cookie there. You must be cognitively engaged throughout the session. You will be in active constant decision making mode throughout the session.

Because this type of reinforcement plan requires more cognitive effort from both the trainer and the dog it is more vital than ever to keep sessions short. I preach the short session mantra all the time, and many people ignore it. But that doesn’t stop me! In an ideal world I’d recommend one minute sessions. One minute goes by very quickly! Unless you time yourself you are likely to go on much longer in a session. But there are diminishing returns based on length of a training session. Typically, the longer you go the less overall progress you will make; the majority of progress comes in that first minute. You may not see a great difference in any individual session, but there is definitely a cumulative effect over the course of a number of sessions.

One common phenomenon that you are likely to see when using a pay scale is that, after receiving a large pay off, your dog’s next repetition will not be as good as the last one. It might be a much more minimal effort. It’s likely that the larger reinforcer will break the flow of the session and momentarily distract your dog, but don’t worry, this is natural, and it doesn’t impact your overall progress. Just be aware that it’s likely to occur and don’t worry about it.

Here’s an example of using a pay scale. In this video I’m working with Tigger on going from hitting the dumbbell with his teeth to opening his mouth over the bar.

https://youtu.be/SWLy6v219Gg

Give it a try! You might be surprised at how using a pay scale changes your training progress.