No Reward Markers

We've been working with a soft ahah (because I was saying 'oops' far too often and confusing the dog!) as a NRM and up until today all I've seen is a recognition of it when we're doing lead walking and she begins to pull.

Just now we've been trying to learn 'back' as I started it with her ages ago and never carried it on.

We had got to the stage where I was trying to fade the prompt and just use the cue word and she was doing fine, then suddenly, she didn't recognise the word and tried every other trick she knows!

Each time she tried a trick I said 'ahah' so she tried another one 'ahah', she stood and thought about it then took a step back watching me very carefully!

Bless her! Obviously she got a C+T but isn't it great to see the cogs turning like that!

I was interested to read this as i was wondering about teaching a NRM - i am clicker training and was wondering if NRM could be used as young as 9 weeks. I do ignoring, folded arms and looking up so i suppose that is a NRM, was wondering if i should put a word to it and what i would use. Wouldn't want it to be used too often or with venom!

Hi catrinsparkles,

You could easily add a marker word and it's really handy. The problem I found was before I started using a NRM, my dog had very little duration with other exercises. Because she was used to trying something different if it didn't pay off immediately, she would do that even when I wanted to build up her duration with sit, for example.

With a NRM she doesn't get confused because she knows when to try again (when I say the NRM) and when not to bother so, considering how easy it is to establish, I wish I'd done it right from the start!

I'd say the folding your arms and looking away is a consequence as opposed to a NRM as a NRM should mark the exact behaviour that the ignoring is a consequence of, just like the clicker marks the behaviour that the reward is a consequence of.

Does that make sense?

PS> it's very difficult to say 'oops' with venom! I found I used it all the time even when it was something I'd done so chose aha instead because it works for me better - others use 'too bad', 'not quite' or 'wrong' - perhaps something like that?