Evaluating Effectiveness of Prompting Ratio Procedures in Basic Canine Obedience Training.

Abstract

Canine obedience training commonly utilizes hand movements, called prompts, of varying degrees to guide dogs to perform a behavior for the first time. Trainers employing various prompting procedures have observed that these prompts oftern become the signal for behavior to occur, instead of a verbal command serving as the signal. The goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a common training procedure using three different rations of prompted trials to probe trials (5:1, 3:1, and 1:1) when teaching young canines to sit and shake.