Markers like clicks and verbal cues work like batteries that lose power when you don't follow through with the promised reward or punishment. If you say "yes" but don't deliver food, or signal "no" but skip the correction, your dog stops listening. Markers only hold the value you consistently back them up with.
Chapters
"Hey, my dog will bite you." You go like, "Hey, here's a reinforcer." And then he comes back and goes, "It's no reinforcer." He'll be like, "Ah, but there is." Alright? So, all markers are like a battery. Alright? So the idea is that you charge or you load your marker and you fill up the battery. Alright? And every time that you say to the dog, Hey, click, no food for you, you diminish the power of the back. All right, the thing is that works in positive reinforcement. I mark and he goes, where's my food? You go like, oh, there's none. And the dog goes, you motherfucker. And he might fall for that 2 or 3 more times. But be careful, he might bite you, right? My dog will bite you. You're like, hey, here's a reinforcer. And then he comes back and goes, there's no reinforcer. He'll be like, ah, but there is. Alright? So you've got to be careful. But the idea is you see people, and this is why I don't like "yes" as a marker, because people burn it out, right? They go, "Yeah, that's cool," right? And the dog goes, "Was that the marker? I didn't get the reinforcer. I don't care about it." The thing about punishment markers is that that's still true, but on a much longer timeline. Because if you say to the dog "no" or whatever, "nei," "förderma," One second gap, punishment because you didn't change your behavior. Then you say to the dog, "No," and he does change his behavior, he avoided the punishment. Yeah, so the idea is he goes, "Oh, I made a choice not to get punished," right? So the marker won't— the battery won't go flat so long as he keeps making that choice. If you ever say to the dog, "No," and the dog goes, "Hmm," I can do the motivational maths, right? Like, "You have the capacity to punish me 8 out of 10. That's all I've ever had in the past, right? You, you're only willing to do that, but the thing that I would rather be doing is a 10 out of 10." He goes, "I will accept that," right? It's in this moment, it's not punishment, right? "To do the thing." And if you— so if you don't have the capacity to do it, So imagine we're using the electrics. I don't like this way of using electrics. We'll talk about how to do punishment later, but imagine this. Imagine my dog is digging and I go, "No," right? And he goes, "Fuck, you said no while I was digging. I got stimmed, that's punishing, I'll stop digging," right? Then 5, 6 times dog starts digging, I go, "No," dog goes, "Ah, cool, I'll stop." Right, like, peace, don't do it. But then one day he's digging and he finds something. And as I say to him, no, he goes, fuck that, I remember how hard you stimmed me and this thing is worth going through the stim. And I go, no, and he goes, nah, fuck you. And then I don't deliver it, then I've diminished my marker. Then my dog goes, fuck your marker, doesn't mean shit, right? So should you use a punishment marker absent being able to follow through? No, you shouldn't. You should still be able to follow through, but that doesn't mean you must follow through, right? The marker, like all the markers we've talked about, they only have the value you give them.
