Shaping

Granted I wasn't training dogs ten years ago but in doing Schutzhund with the GSDs I work with a lot of older "old school" type people that have been at this for decades.  I do not think shaping is a new concept, at least not in SchH (which ironically always gets a bad rap as being a "crank and yank" type training). I do not think that it is being used any more now than it has been, but I think the terminology is catching on more (ie, what my trainer describes doing 15 years ago is shaping but they never called it that) and people are getting better and more refined with their technique.

Shaping isn't new but with more sharing of knowledge via the internet it's become more common to hear the phrase.  I've trained dogs for almost 30 years and we were using shaping back then but as Liesje said, didn't have a term for it. 

JackieG

Shaping isn't new but with more sharing of knowledge via the internet it's become more common to hear the phrase.  I've trained dogs for almost 30 years and we were using shaping back then but as Liesje said, didn't have a term for it. 

 So when trainers shaped a behavior way back then they knew not to add the cue until after they were sure the dog knew the behavior? You also knew how to shape all kinds of behaviors such as touch, retrieve, bow, etc?

MOVED to the Training section where threads DIE.

ShelterDogs

 So when trainers shaped a behavior way back then they knew not to add the cue until after they were sure the dog knew the behavior? You also knew how to shape all kinds of behaviors such as touch, retrieve, bow, etc?

Yep. :)   You sound a little skeptical but that could just be me, either way, the theory and methods of shaping aren't new and advanced training of many species has been done using shaping for many many years.  

 Umm... yeah... shaping isn't new at all... maybe to the mainstream dog trainers, but it's been around in experimental analysis of behavior quite a while (a quick search showed an article from 1969) and applied behavior analysis.