Free Shaping
One of the greatest ways to train your dog is free shaping. Essentially, free shaping is where you reward your dog when they do something desirable, without you giving cues or lures. This is as opposed to lure and reward training, where you use something, frequently a treat, to lure your doggo into an action or position.
The result of free shaping is more than just your doggo behaving in a way you want in common situations. They’re also developing a mindset that is more confident, engaged, and in sync with you.
Intentional Free shaping
Free shaping can happen in an intentional training session like training your dog to get on a skateboard. Here, you would put a skateboard in front of your doggo and let them think and experiment at their own pace, reward each experimental thing they do that gets them closer to getting on the board, and eventually, they’ll get onto the board!
Spontaneous Free shaping
But free shaping can also be done spontaneously, impromptu, on-the-fly. Here, when your dog is just “randomly” demonstrating desired behaviors, you reward them. This could be sitting and waiting patiently, hanging out in a certain spot in the house, not jumping up on you when you walk in the door (or maybe you do want them to jump on you!), or being good on a walk when they see another dog.
At any given moment, your dog is probably doing something that you would either give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to, so the opportunities to free shape are endless.
This is where having treats within reach is handy because, just like your dog, you don’t know when their “rewardable” behavior is going to happen. It doesn’t really work to run to the cupboard, open up your treat bag, and come back to the dog. That is a lot of friction and, realistically, you’re not likely to do it, and your dog likely won’t still be doing the rewardable behavior and won’t know what it is getting the reward for. (I’ll write more extensively on this at some point, but research has shown you have one second to let your dog know they did the right thing by using your marker word, like “yes”, and then you have as long as they are focused on you to deliver the reward. Otherwise the association is not made.)
Doggo Discs in Doggo Treat Tubes
I don’t intend to always plug Doggo Sessions products, but I will when called for, like now! Our Doggo Discs in our Doggo Treat Tubes are “bar none” the best reward system for free shaping. There’s simply nothing like it currently on the market.
Yes, dogs absolutely love the discs, but it’s the tubes that allow you to realistically have that reward when you need it.
Reusable treat dispensers and pouches are bigger, bulkier, 100x more expensive. I’m kinda a nut about being prepared with Lupin, but even I wasn’t able to always have a pouch near me…which was the whole reason for creating Doggo Discs and Treat Tubes!
Treat Tubes are small, stashable, and quick to access. Put several tubes in key places (around the house, car, purse, pocket) and you will always be able to successfully reinforce your doggo’s random desired behaviors, free shaping them into your dream doggo!
