Rehearsal

How it works

Behavior that produces a good outcome for the dog is reinforced, and every repetition adds to that history. A dog who barks at the mail carrier sees the mail carrier leave every single day, so from the dog's side the barking works every time it is tried. The same applies to jumping on guests, pulling toward a smell, or grabbing food from a counter. Repetitions also make a behavior faster and more automatic, so it starts before the dog has seemingly thought about it. This is the mechanism behind management: blocking the situation where an unwanted behavior happens stops the practice, and the new behavior being trained gets the repetitions instead. Rehearsal works in both directions, and a calm response practiced hundreds of times becomes the easy default in exactly the same way.

What it looks like

A dog lunges at the fence whenever the neighbor's dog walks by, about six times a day. While a training plan begins, the owner blocks the bottom of the fence with privacy slats and brings the dog inside during the neighbor's usual walk times. The lunging drops to almost nothing, and the sessions where the dog practices looking back to the owner for a treat become the main repetitions that dog gets.

Commonly confused with

Reinforcement history

Reinforcement history is the total record of what a behavior has earned a dog over their whole life. Rehearsal is each individual repetition that adds to that record, so limiting rehearsal is how the history of an unwanted behavior stops growing.

Related terms