What is Shaping?

Shaping is a form of service dog training using successive approximation. When shaping, we reinforce tiny steps towards a goal behavior. We mark and reward (e.g., click, then treat) for minuscule increments along the path, rewarding many times for any step toward the larger goal. Once your dog has mastered offering the behavior at the current level, you start to wait for a tiny bit more of the behavior and then reinforce at that level.

For example, if the final behavior is for the dog to lie down on a mat and relax, there are several pieces to the behavior – go to the mat, lie down, then relax. Shaping would start with clicking the dog for just looking at the mat, then taking a step toward the mat, then having one paw on it, etc.

In shaping, there is no pressure or force, and we are not luring the dog into place with food, nor using known cues like “sit” or “down.” Shaping is a process of the dog figuring out what to do by being repeatedly reinforced for minute efforts in the right direction.

Why Shape?

We often want to take a faster route to training – to lure the dog into place with food, pull them into place with the leash, or just tell them what to do. For many behaviors, especially simple behaviors like “sit,” “touch” (nose targeting), or “drop it,” this can be effective. But in other cases, shaping is much better…

8 Reasons to Shape your Service-Dog-in-Training (SDiT)

Shaping is FUN. It is so. much. fun. for. dogs! Many dogs sparkle all over when we shape with them. Shaping requires a very high rate of reinforcement, so your dog just WINS over and over. They can do no wrong in shaping because there is no wrong. They also have to think their way through, so it is like doing a puzzle where they try things out and get rewarded for every tiny attempt. It is up to us, the trainer, to make it so easy for our dog to succeed that they keep getting it right. Because our dogs enjoy it so much, we do, too!

Shaping is great for your relationship with your dog. This is so important for service dogs. It is a cooperative game we are playing together. Our dogs have to be motivated to work for us. Because it is such a fun and positive experience, shaping builds your bond, and supports your dog’s trust in you and your working partnership.

Shaping builds confidence. It helps your dog learn to be creative, resilient, and take risks. “Do I really want my dog to be creative and take risks, though?” you may be asking yourself. YES, if your service dog’s tasks will involve alerting or respond to your symptoms or to something in the environment (sound alerts, finding a curb or an exit) or leading you in any way (guiding you to the car, forward-momentum pull, locating your phone for you), you want your dog to feel empowered taking the lead, which means taking a risk. For example, if you tell your dog to down-stay, but then your timer starts beeping or you start having an anxiety attack, you want your dog to feel confident to break that down to alert you! Because there is no “wrong” in shaping and because your dog has been rewarded for offering behavior, she is more likely to show initiative to alert or respond.

Shaped skills are the most robust. When you build a skill with shaping, you are slowly, painstakingly training it with a huge reinforcement history. That makes it a more “valuable” skill to your dog. Additionally, because your dog is not learning passively (as with a lure or being manipulated into position), but instead has to think it’s way through the process, a behavior taught with shaping is more resistant to distraction, distance, reactivity, or distress. This is why we train a relaxed, long-down stay with shaping. The “settle” is a bread-and-butter skill for a service dog, so we want it to be an easy, default behavior, even around a high degree of distraction. This is also why it’s so important to shape behaviors your dog will have to do under stress, such as if the handler is ill or debilitated, as with a panic attack, seizure, a fall, etc.

Shaping is more accessible for physically disabled trainers. Shaping requires planning, patience, observation, and good timing with your event marker. But it does not require you to hold a leash, stand, bend, pull, push, or lure the dog. You don’t even need to use a clicker. The event marker can be any signal your dog can perceive that you can make easily and repeatedly — a mouth click, a word, a vibration, a light, etc. The video below demonstrates my service dog’s “pivot,” which I shaped from my wheelchair. The video shows the final version of the behavior, but I started by shaping my dog to put a paw on a phone book, then two paws, then move a hind foot, etc. I did it all from my chair, using a clicker and tossed treats.

Shaping allows you to train your dog to perform any behavior that it is physically and emotionally capable of doing. Can you imagine trying to lure your dog to open a door with a handle that has to be turned and pushed inward? Or training her to retrieve a bottle of water from the refrigerator with capturing? But you can shape these behaviors. You can shape a dog to do a behavior that it would never perform otherwise. When you know how to shape, the sky is the limit!

Shaping is therapeutic for dogs who are coping with fear, grief, anxiety, or other types of stress. While we generally recommend that only confident, sociable, temperamentally stable dogs be selected for public access service dogs, any dog may sometimes deal with a life stressor. For example, when Lee’s dog, Shadow, got stressed by the death of their other dog, combined with the frequent new presence of Lee’s baby grandson, one of my recommendations was to play shaping games with Shadow. When clients first bring home a newly adopted dog or puppy, I often recommend shaping to start to build their bond and help the dog come out of its shell. And for situations where a service dog is nervous of a particular obstacle in the environment — such as a subway or sewer grate — we usually use shaping.

Shaping your dog builds your skills as a trainer. Shaping IS harder than luring or capturing. It requires more patience and takes more time. You also need to plan ahead because you have to have a picture in your mind of the steps your dog needs to take to complete the behavior, so that you know which moments to mark and reward. All of this makes you a much better trainer, which is to say, you learn to communicate more effectively with your dog. The best trainers are master shapers. You can become one, too!

Tips for Shaping Success

Karen Pryor’s Ten Laws of Shaping from her seminal book, Don’t Shoot the Dog, is a great place to start learning about shaping. Read the “ten laws,” then come back here for some tips for shaping success!

Shaping Tips

Start with very easy criteria. Keep your expectations low! Click for TINY movements toward the final goal. If the goal is for the dog to go in the crate, start with glancing at the crate. From there, when your dog is looking at the crate reliably, you can click for taking one step toward it. Then for putting its nose in, then its ear, then its paw. Don’t wait for the dog to walk all the way in before you click!

Click (then treat) very, very, very often! This is called a “high rate of reinforcement.” When all else fails, click more often (which usually requires lowering criteria).

Once your dog is doing the first thing well, start holding out for a tiny bit more or better. If she is reliably walking to the crate and putting her nose in, try waiting a millisecond to click when her eye goes in. When she can do that, wait till the whole head goes in.

Keep shaping sessions very short. It’s a lot of mental effort for our dogs (and for us!). Shaping is a progression, but if we go too long, the dog gets tired, makes mistakes, and the behavior starts to fall apart. Because shaping can be so fun or consuming that we can lose track of how long we’ve been training, I recommend setting a timer for one minute to start.

Quiet hands, quiet body, quiet mouth. Shaping requires concentration. Dogs usually learn best when we keep distractions to a minimum. Experiment with letting your event marker doing all the talking, keeping your feet still, and only moving your dog with where you toss the treats.

Last, and most importantly, have fun!

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