The key ideas

Don't Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training

Karen Pryor, 1984

You can't explain anything to a dolphin in words, and you can't force it. Karen Pryor taught dolphins complex tricks anyway, and then noticed that the same laws of learning work with children, neighbors and herself. The book is about how reinforcement, small steps and precise timing change behavior, and about eight ways to get rid of behavior that gets in the way.

Who it is for

For parents, dog and cat owners, teachers, managers, and anyone who wants to change someone else's habit, or their own, without shouting or blame.

A reinforcer is anything that, occurring in conjunction with an act, tends to increase the probability that the act will occur again.

What the book is about

How do you teach a dolphin to jump through a hoop if you can't explain anything to it, can't force it, and can't even take it by the paw, because it has no paws? In the sixties, Karen Pryor solved problems like this every day: she trained dolphins at a marine park in Hawaii. Her tools were fish, a whistle and patience.

Over time she noticed that the same laws of learning work with a dog, a child, a roommate and herself. That is what her book is about. Coming up: a whistle that turned out to matter more than the fish, a dolphin that was taught to invent, a game where people train each other without words, and eight ways to get rid of behavior that gets in the way. The book's title hints that one of them is best left alone.

Idea 1. You recognize a reward by its result

The book's central concept sounds dry, but it's simple. Reinforcement is whatever happens during an action or right after it and makes that action more likely to be repeated. For a dolphin, it's a fish. For a person, it can be a smile, praise, money, or the fact that something unpleasant has finally stopped.

The author makes an important point here. Reinforcement is defined by what happens to the behavior, not by our intentions. If you praise a child for something and they do it less and less often, praise may not be a reward for them. And if you scold them and they do it again and again, perhaps your attention itself is working as a reward.

A child gets adults' attention mostly when they misbehave. It looks as though the misbehavior itself is what's being reinforced.

A reward can only be recognized by its effect. What looks like punishment sometimes turns out to be reinforcement for another person.

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About the author

Karen Pryor is an American specialist in animal behavior. In the 1960s she trained dolphins at a marine park in Hawaii. Later she did a great deal to spread clicker training.

All books by this author: Karen Pryor

Terms from the book

  • Reinforcement: Anything that happens during an action or right after it and makes it more likely that the action will be repeated. It is defined by its result, not by intention.
  • Conditioned reinforcer: A signal, such as a whistle or the click of a clicker, that has been linked to a reward and has itself started to work as a reward. It helps mark the right action at the exact moment.
  • Variable schedule of reinforcement: An arrangement in which an already learned behavior is rewarded not every time, but unpredictably. It can help maintain the behavior.
  • Jackpot: An unexpectedly large reward that, according to the author's observations, is sometimes used to mark a breakthrough in learning.
  • Shaping: Learning in small steps: first a rough approximation of the desired action is reinforced, then an ever more precise one.
  • Extinction: The gradual disappearance of a behavior that is no longer reinforced. Before that, the behavior sometimes briefly gets stronger.

All terms

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