This week we are hanging out again with our Swedish dog training buddies, Emelie and Eva, of Carpe Momentum. And we are talking about the importance of defining, building, and maintaining our reinforcement procedures.

During our conversation, Eva shares something that gets her a little worked up when she’s talking about training. Of course, since these guys are the authors of the book Agility Right From the Start, the initial examples that we discuss are agility-focused but don’t worry because the principles are totally applicable to good training in general. And we do get into other examples of these concepts as we dig in.

We also talk about:

• What we mean by reinforcement procedures, as well as why they are important.
• Why it might be a problem if your dog develops a habit of LEAVING your reinforcement procedure (which you might call it a game), but leaving it before you are ready to begin the next rep.
• What happens when you interrupt a trained sequence of behaviors, and why that can’t be your primary training strategy.

Spoiler alert: It all keeps circling back to how important those clean training loops are to efficient and effective learning.

But I won’t give you any more spoilers, you’ll just have to listen for yourself.

Links Mentioned:
Carpe Momentum
Episode 49: The Value of Offered Behavior with Emelie Johnson Vegh & Eva Bertilsson
Episode 31: Start Button Behaviors with Emelie Johnson Vegh and Eva Bertilsson
Episode 23: Dealing with Errors with Emelie Johnson Vegh and Eva Bertilsson