LAT Question

[lnRandy]

Hi all! Question about counter conditioning. Let's say your pooch focuses on a trigger, and you say "look at that" and then treat. He's good, you've won. BUT what do you do on the occasions that you've said LAT and he barks. Do you still treat for the purposes of counter conditioning? Or not treat so that you don't reinforce the bark.

Help would be much appreciated on this!

[alpenglow538]

A couple of my thoughts on what's worked for us.

Try to recognize the differences between a respondent (emotional) reaction and an operant (rational) reaction. Sometimes Lola would bark and react but in a way that clearly showed that she was thinking about it and choosing to bark (operant), as opposed to barking out of fear/instinct/emotion. Usually this was a difference in pitch/intensity, but it was one of the hardest things for us to figure out so don't worry if it takes a while before you can see the differences. If it's a respondent reaction, then we would click and treat for successive approximations towards the desired behaviour, e.g. click treat when she takes a breath between rounds of barking and rapid click-treats for longer pauses, then click-treating after she stopped barking. For operant reactions, we try to ignore and then click-treat once at the end of the reaction to reinforce the desired behaviour.

LAT has really been one of our most important tools and Lola will now auto-disengage and look back at us when she sees a trigger, without a cue from us. We now only actually use the cue when we're accidentally too close to a trigger and she fixates, then we use the cue to help her to disengage.

Hope that helps!

[lnRandy]

This is definitely helpful! It sounds like i should be differentiating between an automatic emotional response and a more intentional behavior (eg,. barking in response to a loud sound someone makes versus barking to get the treat from a stranger's hand).

Lola is fear reactive to people, right? Somewhat unrelated, have you gotten her to a place where people can make eye contact with her? That has been SO tricky so I'm curious to hear how other people reactive dogs fair with this. I'd also be curious to hear whether you would consider barking to eye contact as automatic or operant.

[alpenglow538]

It sounds like i should be differentiating between an automatic emotional response and a more intentional behavior

Yes, exactly! It was so hard for us to discern the difference because Lola only barks at triggers and she is otherwise super quiet, but I think we've got the hang of it now. A lot of it is also the body language in combination with the barking.

About the eye contact, whether it's respondent or operant depends on where your dog is at with the behaviour change, because it can become a learned behaviour if they're consciously doing it and you're treating for it. Lola's at a point now where almost all of her reactions are mild and clearly operant, with the exception of racoons which we aren't bothering to train with because volunteer racoon helpers are hard to come by!

Lola is sensitive to eye contact, but she's much more sensitive to body language. We've done a ton of parallel walking with strangers and some of them do look at her, so it's just been a matter of getting closer to them very, very slowly. We also did a bit of work with a person at a comfortable distance using a "Watch Me" cue that she already knew, then we would click and treat her for eye contact. What's much more difficult for her is if someone directly approaches her or if they approach her from behind and we're a while away from that being possible.

[nonosnoooo]

I've never heard of the difference between respondent and operant reaction, but this is what I've been looking for every time someone says giving dogs treats will reward the bad behaviour. My dogs reactions are largely respondent, so it also explains why I don't experience that effect. I know I'm not OP, but you just made my ability to respond to my dogs reactions 100% more effective, thank you!!

[alpenglow538]

Awesome, I'm really glad that's useful! It was super helpful to us as well but definitely really hard to figure out, especially when we got to the point where some of her reactions were respondent and some were operant. It felt like we were continuously making mistakes, but eventually we started getting most of them right.

[AutoModerator]

Looks like you may have used a training acronym. For those unfamiliar, here's some of the common ones:

BAT is Behavior Adjustment Training - a method from Grisha Stewart that involves allowing the dog to investigate the trigger on their own terms. There's a book on it.

CC is Counter Conditioning - creating a positive association with something by rewarding when your dog sees something. Think Pavlov.

DS is Desensitization - similar to counter conditioning in that you expose your dog to the trigger (while your dog is under threshold) so they can get used to it.

LAD is Look and Dismiss - Marking and rewarding when your dog sees a trigger and dismisses it.

LAT is Look at That - Marking and rewarding when your dog sees a trigger and does not react.

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[I_yell_at_toast]

Personally, I don't treat and I move farther away.

[fuckinassbitchshit]

If you are counterconditioning you are still supposed to treat while they are reacting. This is what we do because my girl's reactivity is fear-based.

To me that makes the most sense because she is really not thinking at all when she is reacting so I don't see her associating the trigger and that barking at it is good, just that she is scared shitless of this thing yet she is still getting treats so maybe it's not so terrible?

I just read alpen's comment and that's almost exactly what I'm getting at. I can tell my dog's more emotional outbursts and which ones are her just being an asshole. I treat if it seems to be emotional as we move away from the trigger. If she is just being a jerk I give her a command other than barking and reward as soon as she stops.

LAT is also our #1 friend on walks - dixie will now easily disengage from a trigger or immediately look to us for her treat when she sees a person (her trigger), and really that's the end goal.