Can You Fade Out Treats Or Toys From The Training Of A Dog?

Training has five stages.

1/Learning

2/Conditioning

3/Practicing

4/Working

5/Reconditioning.

Without reconditioning, you will lose the conditioning part of the training; thus, you can not fade the treats out and not lose the all-important part of training, which is conditioning. If you fade treats out, you will lose the conditioning phase of the training. It is called extinction. Extinction takes some time, but it will eventually happen if you do not recondition the dog. So trainers who tell you that they will faze out the treats or toys are either lying to you in order to get your business or they mean that you will not need to recondition the dog as often if you train him for more times/repetitions or they have no clue. The dog will not forget what he learned; he will just lose the conditioning - classical conditioning aspect of the training. Check classical conditioning. It is a learning process that occurs when two stimuli are repeatedly paired: a response that is at first elicited by the second stimulus is eventually elicited by the first stimulus alone. In other words, the signal bypasses the decision-making part of the brain. So in dog training, you repeat the down command and reward him with a treat if you are a cookie trainer.

When he does go down, eventually, the dog will go down even if you do not have the treat to give him. That is what your trainer means by fading away. The problem is that the same like Pavlov's dog will stop salivating after you do not give him food after you ring the bell, the same way the dog will not go down as a result of conditioning "AUTOMATICALLY" after you give him the command. This is an example of the extinction of conditioning. He will do it ( maybe) because he may remember that he suppose to do it, but it will not be done via bypass of a decision-making part of the brain, but the decision part of the brain will have to make the decision. Thus the decision to do it or not is automatic any more ( conditioned) because the conditioning got extinct. Then the dog is thinking, weighting the options based on the consequences of their decisions - Skinner 4 segments of positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment. Now, these also need or could be conditioned. However, if you use it for a positive reinforcement treat, then you will also need to condition the dog via Pavlov, but if you want to eliminate the threat in the first place, then you are at the dead end. You will damage the training's conditioning faze if you will not recondition the dog with a treat. And thus, you hit a dead end.