What is a Marker?

A marker is a common slang term in dog training for a word, sound or tone that is associated with a reward. The term “Marker” gets its name from the idea of marking a behavior you want your dog to. It is an indicator that positive reinforcement is coming. 

There are two common types of reward markers that are common in pet training. The first is a terminal marker. A terminal marker means come get your treat. The other is a duration marker. A duration marker means your food is coming to you. Once your dog understands their markers, then the markers can be used to tell the dog they did something correctly. We now have a clear way to reward our dog.

In order for a marker to work it first has to be “loaded.” Loading a marker means conditioning the word, sound, or tone to the presence of the reward. When loading a marker the order of events needs to be consistent so it can be predictable to the dog. The dog should first hear our word, sound, or tone and then see the reward be presented. For the cleanest reward pairing avoid saying yes at the same time as feeding and especially after the dog has eaten the treat. 

Let’s start with loading a terminal marker. For this example, “yes” will be our terminal marker. We will  first say “yes” and then grab and present the food. We will encourage the dog to come to us to get the food. If the dog is not already coming to us after he hears “yes” or when he sees us grab the food, then we will take a step back when presenting the food. Stepping back will encourage the dog to come to us to get the food after hearing the “yes” marker. After repeating this process for a couple short sessions we should see the dog show a change of behavior when we say “yes” and towards us in order to get the food he knows we are going to get for him. 

Now let’s load a duration marker. In this example “good” will be our duration marker. We will load this marker very similar to how we loaded the “yes” marker except one key difference. Now we will not encourage movement. When starting a duration marker, it can help to have multiple treats or food pieces loaded in your hand. We will keep them in a closed hand about a foot away from the dog. We will then say “good.” After saying “good,” we will instantly bring the closed hand to the dog and give one treat. We will remove the hand, say “good” again and bring the hand back to the dog immediately to get the food again. After the last piece of food we can use our terminal marker to allow the dog to become more active, reward, and replenish the food in our hand to continue loading the duration marker. 

It can be easier to load duration markers during simple behaviors like sit or down. However, it is also possible to load duration markers before your dog has any formal obedience behaviors or foundation. The timing is the most important part. 

After a couple sessions of loading a duration marker, we should see the dog start to show a change of behavior that is more subtle than the “Yes.” The dog may perk his ears, or tighten his posture, maybe shift a little in the beginning but ultimately know that this word means food is coming to him.