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Conditioning Handicap

The term “Functional Conditioning” is actually a utilitarian brush-up of the dog’s natural tendency to be encouraged as well as the avoidance of that adverse consequence when not taking what it has been trained to do. This does not only include the positive and negative reinforcement undertaken during its learning process, the positive and negative punishment imposed to make the dog realize its painful consequence, but also taking into account the dog’s internal capacity to act favorably or indifferently; its lack of inertia; thoughtlessness, etc. In other words, Functional Conditioning does not only involve the behavioral bearing of the dog in taking its chances of the physical reinforcement and the concrete punishments as an outcome of its behavior, but it includes its mental inertia as well. The idea is that task will be performed as taught because the dog also chooses to perform it well and not simply been made as the result of some ‘reflex reaction’ carried through by a stimulus-response. It must take the dog as a whole. This, as compared to the limitation of a maimed schoolwork that we often take to simply mimic the behavior of that sharp tack dog but without the spirit that is behind them. Simply put, you cannot let the dog do a task as quickly as they should by coaching them to do just that, but you can condition it to also want to do it as quickly as it can.

This holistic approach implies redefining a kind of response that is already built in a dog and not largely something that originates from us. It means admitting the reality that they have a very strong instinct to hunt or a craving for prey. You start to condition a dog to get just that and you have in your hands the most powerful patron dog on earth. But to be unaware or neglect this would only mean a costly trade-off, which only stifles the dog’s ability to perform a task with an unflinching energy. It will only make success more difficult to attain and at best, having an inconsistent dog that is oblivious because it is charged to behave in such a way that has become a nagging coercion. Viz., you will then have a handicapped dog despite all its training simply caused by an inert behavior of indifference. 

However, when your method of conditioning is rewarding your dog to be able to hunt or get hold of prey, if you succeed to persuade the dog to deliver what you want because in return it will earn what it really wants as its reward, and this instead of simply phrasing or patting it for a good work. Your conditioning process will excite the dog to play the game with you. Your phrases and patting that accompany that particular task will reinforce their confidence that they are on the right track of getting that reward and so swiftly takes the fastest possible way to get what it really wants.

However, the reality that dogs misjudge or misunderstand your command and even at times get lured by a different enticement or maybe because of exhaustion; not because of an instinctive drift to hunt, but merely a blunder or a misdirection, then you need to make a correction. This is where waves and waves of topics got big nowadays, the victor however, are those that attribute their method of approach is the combination of a positive reinforcement operant conditioning or P.R.O.C. along with the negative punishment approach. It has become so huge and critical that trainers tend to explain it rather than train the dog back to square one. Rather than that, you can instead calmly lead the dog back to where he was before it committed the lapse, to reorient and recondition the dog, then reinforce the verbal command again as you taught it, or using the indirect pressure by utilizing a leash; to have complete control, then see if it has outdone its mistake(s) this time around. To the dog, the recap of the same procedure all over again, is in and of itself, already a form of ‘punishment’, ‘reinforcement’ and ‘pressure,’ that has been polished off, in one short and unsophisticated setting. What’s more, to the dog, the sooner it can self-correct to do what you like it to do, the quicker will you give out its desired reward.