What Are "Extinction Bursts" And How Is It Similar To Our Reaction To A Broken Vending Machine?
When you’re managing and training your dog to reduce their “demand barking”, there will come a time when their “demand barking” will escalate, and the dog parent will believe that all of their efforts were for naught.
But this precise moment is when you know your hard work is paying off, as this rapid escalation of barking is called an “extinction burst”.
On the latest episode of The Family Pupz Podcast, we asked the founder of Positive Partners Dog Training LLC, Brianne Harris, what "extinction bursts" are, and how it's similar to our reaction to a broken vending machine (and why it's a good sign).
Check out her answer above!
To listen to the rest of the conversation with Brianne, check out the podcast episode below:
[TRANSCRIPT BELOW]
Family Pupz: Could you tell us what extinct extinction bursts are? And why do you think they're actually a good sign when it seems to be happening? And I love your analogy, so if you could talk to our audience about your analogy, how it's similar to us using a vending machine that suddenly stopped working correctly.
Brianne Harris: Yes. So I think let's talk about the vending machine first, because I think it'll make the extent extinction burst make more sense.
So I always tell my clients, when we're training our dogs to do something, our goal is that we would like to be a slot machine, not a vending machine.
So if you go to a Coke machine, every day, you go to the same vending every day at lunch, and you put your $1.25 in, and you push the button, same button, you always get your drink every single time.
And you've been doing that for months on end, and you love having that drink. And it's like, one of the highlights your day?.
Well, if you go, and you put your money in, and you push the button, and you don't get a drink out, are you just gonna walk away? “Oh, well, I guess I didn't need that $1.25.” You're not going to quietly walk away. I'm gonna push the button again. And then you're gonna push it harder, you might even hit that button. If you're really frustrated, because you've been getting a soda by pushing that button every day for years, you might even kick a machine or shake it.
Because like suddenly, something that has always worked for you and has always gotten what you want it quit working.
That's an extinction burst.
An extinction burst is a behavior that you have done or that your dog has done, and it has always gotten the desired result. And when it quits working, you're actually going to see an increase in that behavior.
So if you're working on demand barking, at first, if the training is working, you should start to see decrease in the demand barking, but it's going to hit a point where your dog goes, “well dang it! Why isn't this working anymore!”, and they're just gonna “Bark, bark, bark, bark, bark!”, and you're gonna feel like you've done everything wrong.
But you can go, “wait! I remember hearing Brianne talk about that. I'm on the right path, because this isn't working for my dog anymore. So he's going to try harder.”
And he's just going to make sure like, “maybe I'm not barking right?” And then usually, once you get through that extinction burst, everything kind of falls into place.
And like I said, it's a great sign that you're doing something, right.
If you see an increase in the behavior after an initial decrease, and then you see that increase, then you can say, “yes, it's working!”
He's trying harder, because he's not getting the desired result anymore.
Family Pupz: Yeah, you'll see the increase before the behavior before dark figures out, hey, yeah, this is not working. So I will cease to ask for things in this way. And then, yeah, all the other training that we've been doing is replacing that way of asking for the thing.
Brianne Harris: Exactly. Yeah, they'll go “wait, you know what? I remember that when I put my chin on her leg. I got what I wanted. Maybe I should try that? Cause that's been great.”
We've already opened the pathways to the correct behaviors, the alternative behaviors that we want to see. So when that other thing that we don't want quits working, our dogs kind of go, “Hold on, I think I know something that might work”.
And then they'll try that, and then when it works, usually after that extinction burst, that behavior you wanted to get rid of quits happening or decreases sharply, because then they fall back onto the appropriate behaviors that you've also been training at the same time.