Shaping v. Luring

In a world of reinforcement based training, I feel obligated to discuss the differences between luring and shaping. While both of these training techniques can share cookies, they have dramatic differences that can especially impact novice trainers. Personally, I don’t like to think about these differences as good or bad, but rather that they have pros and cons to consider. While my preference has long-standing been shaping, every year I feel more and more appreciative of the time and place where luring can be exceptionally beneficial.

Luring

Luring is a method of training that uses a prompt, such as a treat or physical aid, that helps to encourage the dog into doing the behavior. The classic example is holding a cookie in front of the dog’s nose to let them follow the cookie, or “lure,” them into doing a behavior, such as a sit or a down. For dogs who love treats, this can be one way to get them doing the behavior quite quickly. An agility example that uses physical aides would be something like stride regulators, which physically direct the dog where to take a step, which is the behavior. This can be very beneficial for helping a dog learn how to use their body in motion, such as lengthening and compressing their strides, or how to move across contact obstacles. 

Shaping

Shaping is a method that exemplifies operant conditioning – “trial and error” learning– by allowing the dog to offer, or try new behaviors, and rewarding the behaviors that we want to see. Rewards are a common term for reinforcers. The definition of a reinforcer is something that causes the behavior to repeat. So the more we give a reinforcer for a behavior we want, the more they will repeat the behavior. An example of shaping would be if I had a perch, and every time the dog interacted with it (looked, sniffed, scratched, stepped on it) and I gave reward, like a cookie. Note, the cookie came after the dog did these behaviors. Dogs learn "how to operate the cookie machine" in shaping because they learn that their actions can cause a reward to happen. In the next session, say I only give cookies when they step on or scratch the perch. Now our dog is likely going to focus on doing more of those behaviors to get more cookies because just sniffing/looking at it isn’t getting them cookies. This is the process of shaping and as I continue, I’m going to add criteria, more specific rules, to make a more specific behavior, like standing on it with just front paws or just back paws. 

Strengths & Challenges

With that in mind, let's talk about some pros and cons. Remember, much of these will be situation specific and to some degree my opinion.

For starters, let’s talk about time commitment. Luring can often get you the behavior very quickly. It's also super beginner friendly because if I have a food motivated, confident dog, I can probably hold a treat in front of their nose and get them to do a lot of things. Maybe we use the cookie to lure them through 12 weave poles; however, what has the dog learned in that repetition? Did they learn to weave or follow the cookie? On first repetition, many lured behaviors “look” like the behaviors but rise (or fall) to the effectiveness of the lure. Luring works well with many repetitions and/or a very gradual “fading” or reducing the presence of the lure, that the dogs learn the behavior and not just follow the cookie.

This is also a commonly encountered challenge, and a common criticism of luring. The phrase I often here is, "my dog won't do it without the cookie," which in my brain, this usually translates to not enough repetitions and/or not fading the lure slowly enough. Additionally, not all behaviors we want to be repeated extensively, such as physically demanding behaviors like weave poles or full-height contacts. If I can use another method that accomplishes it in fewer repetitions, I will almost always choose that.

Now let's talk shaping, because in transparency, I LOVE shaping, but it's not without it's challenges. The first challenge is that it takes a technique and skill on the trainer's part -- it's not as simple as hold the cookie here. As a result, especially for novice dog trainers, shaping can take a lot longer. However, for an experienced trainer (and dog) in shaping, it can also be much faster to get the final product. So shaping has a steep learning curve for the trainer, but can be a vary worthwhile investment.

There are some more pros to this as well, starting with the fewer repetitions and not needing to fade the lure. But other advantages include that, in my experience, dogs who are taught the behavior by shaping well often are able to generalize the behavior to new environments, lasts longer (so say you take a break from training for several months), and because shaping is all about offering, they have the potential to earn the cookie when they offer it, they will often volunteer the behavior on the chance that they may get a cookie -- not because of it.

In Summary

I know some incredible trainers -- some who use both methods, others who lean heavily luring or shaping -- and they have some incredible dogs. We all have our preferences; however, my recommendation would be that no matter what method you use, understand what it is and why it works. This way you will have the understanding to use it best and can better troubleshoot when you have challenges. This is where tools such as video cameras, trusted mentors, and quality resources can also help along the process.