To shape or not to shape?

Kay Laurence
Feb 2008

I’ve just returned from a rather mind stretching trip to the USA. Beginning in Texas with Jesús Rosales-Ruiz group of students at North Texas University (my mind “pinged” after that degree of stretching), then onto a very sodden Houston with Rachel Long, a relaxing ranch-like weekend. Finally a trip to Connecticut and Lesley Nelson at Tails U Win with a collection of great training skills and enthusiastic learners. So much enthusiasm that at the end of the third day we still managed to find the energy to teach a chocolate lab to hold his tail perfectly still in an “I’m a flag pole” pose!

I am thrilled that every time I travel the general clicker training skills are always improving, which I believe can be accounted for through greater internet access and the clicker trainers’ mindset, which is to share willingly and with enthusiasm and to go on learning more and more.

One common thread with all three groups was a keen desire to increase their shaping skills. “Free” shaping seems to have become an area used mostly for tricks or entertainment. Not many people are using shaping for essential, life-managing skills or critical sports or work behaviours. Perhaps the confidence in shaping is not on par with the confidence in targeting or luring?

Yet self taught behaviours become stronger with use, require little maintenance, and can never be lost. Have you forgotten how to ride a bike or to swim? These are self taught behaviours, that whilst you had guidance, only an internal process that you had to discover could result in a successful solution. Imagine that when you were learning this skill, you carved out pathways in your brain, and they are still in place, perhaps a little coated in cobwebs, but not lost.

To me, the essential skills such as: communication, balance, jumping, contacts, retrieve, focus, learning, self control need acquisition at the very core of the learner. They need to make their own pathways. External prompting to achieve success will always be needed if the learner is dependant on those prompts during acquisition. That first behaviour that you truly “free” shaped, or shaped without help, is very often the strongest, it pops up when the dog is struggling to find solutions and last for their lifetime.

What I saw in general was a presumption that the beginning of a free shaping session was a massive amount of variation until the new behaviour could be selected. All this achieves is tremendous confusion in the dog’s mind, and a massive number of unreinforced behaviours. We can help our learners so much more if the learning is planned with more care.

The dog should be set up to be successful from the outset. The situation laid out so that there is a very high probability that the opening element of the behaviour is most likely to occur. If a paw contact is desired, then the dog is lured to stand in a place through their first reward (the reward for coming into the lesson with patience!)  so that the leg we want them to move is prepared. If the dog is standing four square, placing the food on the floor so that the front right leg is required to step back to allow the dog to eat it will result in an unbalanced position. After the dog has eaten they are 99% likely to step forward with that paw. This is the beginning of the action that can be shaped: right paw contact with an object. The shaping then progresses down a narrow channel of choice by consistent and progressive placement of the reward. The choice is still the dog’s, the learning is self acquired but within limiting parameters. Their creativity and ideas can follow the opening thread.  There is only one behaviour pattern getting reinforcement. The stress of “finding” the correct behaviour is removed, and also the teacher stress of keeping up with a shaping frenzy. 

In addition to learning in very small slices, minimal generalisation can be included to build a really robust behaviour, that is flexible and strong, and already generalised before completion.

This is micro shaping. It results in accurate, self taught behaviours that the learner is able to adapt to different situations. Bicycles come in many shapes and sizes, we adapt our core learning without guidance, lures or prompts and find a way to add to those neural pathways. It may not be as easy to acquire core learning as we get older, but I do believe that is another skill that just requires shaping.