Shaping: It’s Not What You Think It Is!
By Deborah Jones, Ph.D.
I seem to talk about shaping an awful lot. You’d think that maybe I’m obsessed or something! I’ve taken shaping on as my personal pet project because I feel like it’s gotten a bad rap from some animal trainers. There are so many misconceptions about what shaping is and how to do it! People either avoid shaping or execute it inappropriately based on these false ideas.
The first issue I’d like to address is a general lack of understanding about what shaping truly is. In a general sense, most of what we do in thoughtful and effective training is shaping. We start out by reinforcing small efforts that are moving in the right direction. We all know the folly of waiting for too much; so most trainers are pretty good at breaking it down and providing plenty of reinforcement for early efforts that are going to eventually lead to the desired target behavior. When you do that you’re shaping, whether you realize it or not.
While shaping is a general approach to training, it is also a specific technique. I believe that this is where there is some major confusion about what is and isn’t shaping. Let me address the general approach first. For the majority of training sessions there is an end goal that the trainer is working towards (the target behavior). Most of us realize that it is going to take a number of sessions to reach that behavior and train it to fluency. Of course some things are simple (such as a hand touch) and some much more complex (such as scent discrimination). But still, the approach is basically the same. Start where your dog can be successful and increase the challenge by very small degrees.
For the hand touch behavior that might mean that you begin reinforcing your dog for looking at your hand when you hold it out. That’s starting where your dog can be successful. If your dog doesn’t look then you will draw his attention to your hand in some way; but only as a very beginning step. Once your dog is regularly looking at your hand then you will need to start increasing your expectations. Your next goal would be for your dog to move, even slightly, towards your hand. And then to touch your hand. And then to follow your moving hand to touch it. And then possibly to hold the hand touch with duration. All of those are steps you are using to shape your target behavior. This process of starting with success and then raising criteria in reasonable increments is a shaping approach, and it’s simply good thoughtful training.
Whenever you take a few minutes before you train to think through your plan for a session and the changes in criteria that you will make as your dog makes progress then you are shaping. One major problem that often develops here is that the dog and trainer get stuck at a certain level and don’t make progress. Shaping towards the target behavior has stalled. I often see this in my retrieve class. The team has made progress to a particular point, such as a nose touch to the retrieve object, but has not moved beyond that point. The reason for this is typically that the trainer, without even realizing it, has halted forward process by no longer raising expectations. The trainer is now reinforcing the same basic behavior over and over again, so the dog rightly thinks that this is all that is required. Being stalled at a particular point in training any behavior is fairly common. The tricky part is to determine how to move beyond that point without sacrificing the dog’s confidence and enthusiasm for training. Often it is possible to split the current behavior into even finer pieces. For example, a stronger nose touch is reinforced while a weaker one is not. For some dogs this works perfectly well. But for others this can quickly become an issue. For these dogs reinforcing on a pay scale where ‘better’ repetitions get more reinforcement is a good way to go. And in some cases we need to think outside of the box altogether and consider unique solutions. These are case by case decisions that can help the process move forward. But the overall approach is still shaping towards a target behavior.
Here’s an example where Tigger was stuck opening his mouth over the dumbbell, but not holding onto it. My out of the box solution was to place the dumbbell into a container for him to reach in and pick up. My larger goal is to have him pick up the dumbbell, lift it above the container, and put it in my hand. In this video I am shaping him lifting it further and further out of the container.
Shaping as a technique, however, is more defined and precise. Unfortunately, people have often added a number of arbitrary and unnecessary rules to shaping. For example, that all shaping has to be pure and you cannot combine it with another technique, such as luring or targeting, or you are somehow cheating. I have absolutely no problem using whatever combination of techniques that work to clarify what I want for my dog, especially early in the process. So, if I want my dog to stick his head in a box I will likely start with some luring to get him interested in the box by tossing a few cookies in for him to eat. This allows me to jump start the process, especially with a dog new to shaping. I toss in a cookie, my dog puts his head in to get it, I mark, he eats the cookie. I repeat that a few times. Then I wait to see what he will do without the cookie lure. If he looks at the box, I mark that, then toss the cookie inside. By moving the cookie from the cause of the behavior to the consequence I have changed it from a lure to a reinforcer. Tossing the cookie into the box after the behavior, rather than handing it to my dog or tossing it away from the box, is also a way to help my dog figure out the target behavior more quickly. Reinforcer placement can help or hinder the process, and should be a thoughtful decision.
From this point I can continue on with the shaping process. That initial lure allowed me to create early success for my dog, and that’s just good training. The real key to future success though, is to transition into shaping and allow my dog to initiate the rest of the repetitions without that extra help. I’ve taken off the training wheels and am allowing my dog to drive the learning process forward.
About 25 years ago I coined the term ‘free shaping’ to describe a very specific type of shaping process. I used this term to distinguish shaping that encourages variability and creativity from other more structured shaping where there is a specific target behavior in mind. I didn’t invent shaping for creativity, that’s been around for much longer than I have, but I did develop the descriptive term. Free shaping is something I often use with my puppies and young dogs to help them become more operant by learning that offering variations on behavior, rather than repeating the same behavior over and over, pays off. This is a powerful lesson and gives my dogs lots of behavioral flexibility, which serves us well in future training endeavors. An operant subject is very valuable indeed. They understand that offering variations on behaviors is a way to gain reinforcers and that makes our job as a trainer much easier. Operant subjects are able and willing to meet us more than halfway in our training endeavors.
Here I am free shaping Helo as a puppy. Getting all those little variations in movement is the only goal of this session.
Unfortunately, the practice of free shaping is often poorly understood and poorly applied. In some cases people assume that all shaping is free shaping. This can lead to confusing and chaotic training sessions with no real goals. I’ve also been schooled by more than one trainer on what free shaping actually is; and they are usually wrong. While I find this somewhat amusing, it also makes me sad. The lack of clarity surrounding this concept very likely ends up confusing dogs as well as people.
If you want to know more about how shaping can improve both you and your dog’s skills you might consider my June 2018 class Beyond the Basics: Shaping Advanced Skills. This class can definitely help you raise your training game to a whole new level and improve your shaping skills exponentially.
See the description, video trailer, and syllabus here:
https://fenzidogsportsacademy.com/index.php/courses/5022
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