What dog owners read: A review of best-selling books

s / Journal of Veterinary Behavior 8 (2013) e27ee46 e38 acquisition and rate of responding. Field observations of dog owners during training found delays to reinforcement range from 0-6.2 s; however, the effects of delaying reinforcement don’t appear to have been studied with dogs. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of delaying reinforcement when training dogs to perform a novel behavior. Pre-training was conducted in an experimental pen to condition them to the sound of a beep (secondary reinforcement) preceding delivery of food treats (primary reinforcement) from a feeding device. In the experiment, dogs were led into the pen and allowed to explore. The target behavior was the dogs sniffing inside one of two containers. When the dogs sniffed inside the correct container and broke infra-red beams, positive reinforcement (beep and then food) was delivered at a pre-set delay. Each dog worked on one delay only (0 s or 1 s). The behavior was considered learned when performed 10 times in a row, with 5 s between responses. The 0 s delay group comprised 7 dogs: 6 learned the behavior and 1 did not. Five dogs were tested at 1 s delay: 2 dogs learned and 3 did not; when these 3 dogs were switched onto 0 s delay, all learned. These results are preliminary, however, delays of 1 s prevented some (60%) dogs learning the task. This research reveals that timing of reinforcement is an important variable in successful dog training.