Evolution Of A Clicker Trainer

I have been train­ing dogs for years and have not always been a “clicker trainer.”  I am what is known in the clicker train­ing world as a “cross-over trainer,” hav­ing used more tra­di­tional meth­ods before becom­ing a con­vert to clicker train­ing.  In the 1980s and 1990s, I was not aware of oper­ant con­di­tion­ing, clicker train­ing meth­ods; how­ever, I always found myself seek­ing out the least harsh meth­ods of train­ing that were avail­able  I was never sat­is­fied with the train­ing meth­ods that I was learn­ing about.  Many years ago, when I was work­ing as a vio­lent crimes pros­e­cu­tor, I became friendly with a K-9 police offi­cer who had trained dogs for the police and the mil­i­tary.  My fam­ily had res­cued a new six month old Shepherd-Rottweiler cross that was out of con­trol.  The offi­cer offered to help and began train­ing “Mur­doch.” I couldn’t stand watch­ing him use, what I later learned, were tra­di­tional train­ing meth­ods.  He was con­stantly cor­rect­ing the dog in ways that I felt were abu­sive.  I couldn’t under­stand why Mur­doch was being pun­ished for sim­ply act­ing like a dog that hadn’t been trained.  It was not his fault that he was act­ing that way but there he was get­ting pun­ished.  It stressed out both him and me.  That was it for me and harsh train­ing meth­ods.  But then what?  I still needed to train my dog.

Some time after that, I was up very late one night watch­ing TV and a dog train­ing infomer­cial came on hosted by David Dike­man.  Dikeman’s  dog train­ing sys­tem is called, Com­mand Per­for­mance.  At the time, it was the least harm­ful train­ing method I could find.  While more gen­tle cor­rec­tions were used than those I saw with the K-9 trainer, they were still cor­rec­tions.  The the­ory was, if the dog did not actu­ally see you cor­rect­ing him it wouldn’t really be a cor­rec­tion.  Much care is taken with this sys­tem to try and avoid the dog see­ing the trainer cor­rect him.  (Unfor­tu­nately, this is not true and the dog is cer­tainly aware who is cor­rect­ing him.)   As with many dif­fer­ent types of pro­grams from diet­ing to sports train­ing, if reli­giously adhered to,  Com­mand Per­for­mance worked.  It took quite awhile but even­tu­ally Mur­doch was walk­ing with me, off leash, across busy streets.  The prob­lem was, I could see that Mur­doch was stressed when he knew we were about to start a train­ing ses­sion.  He would endure the train­ing but he didn’t like it.  I kept look­ing for a bet­ter train­ing technique.

Some years later, we adopted a new Beaglish dog, Brid­get, that def­i­nitely needed train­ing and I signed up at the local Pets­Mart.  I hap­pened to meet a great trainer who intro­duced me to clicker train­ing.  Marty was a trainer who was prop­erly trained in clicker train­ing.  That is cer­tainly not true of many of the train­ers in large pet sup­ply stores.  (Remem­ber, just because some­one is walk­ing around with a clicker and a treat bag, that does not make them a clicker trainer.  They are often no more a clicker train­ers than some­one walk­ing around with a spat­ula in a fast food restau­rant that might call him or her­self a chef.)

After expe­ri­enc­ing how well this method worked with Brid­get I read more about clicker train­ing.  I learned that true clicker train­ing is actu­ally oper­ant con­di­tion­ing devel­oped by the B.F. Skin­ner, Ph.D., at Har­vard dur­ing the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.  I also learned from Karen Pryor (the woman who is pri­mar­ily respon­si­ble for intro­duc­ing clicker train­ing to the dog train­ing world) that is is the same train­ing used to train dol­phins and whales at places like Sea World and the Shedd Aquar­ium.  It is the process of mark­ing the behav­ior being sought and then imme­di­ately reward­ing that behav­ior. I had stum­bled on an effec­tive train­ing method that uses absolutely no cor­rec­tions — no prong col­lars, no shock col­lars, no leash pop­ping and no yelling.  After doing some addi­tional research, I also learned that oper­ant con­di­tion­ing (clicker train­ing) is con­sid­ered by many sci­en­tists to be the most effec­tive train­ing method for any type of ani­mal.  Not only does this train­ing work, but the sub­jects can’t wait to begin a train­ing ses­sion.  Instead of stress in the antic­i­pa­tion of a train­ing ses­sion, the sub­jects can not wait to begin.  It is their oppor­tu­nity to fool you into giv­ing them treats just for doing some­thing silly like sit­ting, lying down, rolling over or most ridicu­lously, just sit­ting in one spot when the han­dler says, “stay.”

It is very excit­ing to be able to encour­age a dog to vol­un­tar­ily exhibit a behav­ior that you are seek­ing.  Not only do the dogs vol­un­tar­ily “throw” these behav­ior, they are anx­ious to per­form.  More impor­tantly, you become much closer to your dog.  You start watch­ing your dog almost as closely as he or she watches you.  A com­mu­ni­ca­tion devel­ops that you never imag­ined and your dog becomes your train­ing part­ner instead of a servant.

Remem­ber, give clicker train­ing a try, it can’t hurt.

Forewarned is Forearmed — Hugging and Kissing Dogs

Lit­tle kids love hug­ging and kiss­ing dogs.  Unfor­tu­nately, hug­ging dogs is prob­a­bly one of the most com­mon causes of dog bites.  You may not have thought about the ways peo­ple and dogs greet each other.  Peo­ple do not greet each other the same as dogs. (Thank good­ness.)  We are pri­mates.  We walk directly toward a per­son that we are greet­ing, look them straight in the eye and either shake hands or hug.  This is pre­cisely why we assume that dogs want to be greeted the same way.  When dogs greet each other, they sort of sidle up side­ways to each other and sniff.  If every­thing is okay, they will either start play­ing or begin run­ning around sniff­ing and search­ing.  When greet­ing, dogs do not look each other directly in the eye or throw their “arms” around each other.  As a matter-of-fact, dogs see all of those actions as threat­en­ing or aggres­sive.  How would you feel about some­one greet­ing you by walk­ing up to you side­ways, not mak­ing eye con­tact and then start sniff­ing you.  Call the Police!  Under­stand­ing the behav­ior of a dif­fer­ent species that we live with is important.

One of the most con­cise expla­na­tions of the dif­fer­ences between how dogs and peo­ple greet each other is found in the excel­lent book, The Other End Of The Leash, by Patri­cia B. McConnell, Ph.D.  If you are a dog lover, you will learn much more about your four-legged friends by read­ing this book.  The Other End Of The Leash, exam­ines many aspects of canine behav­ior.  Dr. McConnell com­bines her own per­sonal and pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ences with the research in canine behav­ior.  Dr. McConnell and vir­tu­ally all other researchers of dog behav­ior rec­om­mend that we dis­cour­age hug­ging and kiss­ing dogs.

In my expe­ri­ence the peo­ple who most want to hug and pet soft liv­ing things are young ado­les­cent girls and chil­dren between about three and five years of age.  I’ve worked with dozens of fam­i­lies with sweet young girls who got growled at, snapped at, or bit­ten in the face (usu­ally not badly, thank heav­ens) when they threw their arms around their dog.  Like young female pri­mates every­where, they craved cud­dling and touch­ing.  Yet while they were think­ing warm, lov­ing thoughts, their dog inter­preted their hug as a rude, dom­i­neer­ing threat display. 

–The Other End Of The Leash, Why We Do What We Do Around Dogs 17 (Ran­dom House Pub­lish­ing Group 2002)

We cer­tainly do not want to see a dog returned to a breeder or shel­ter because of an inci­dent that could have been eas­ily avoided.  Become more obser­vant of dogs’ body lan­guage.  There are many body sig­nals that dogs exhibit that com­mu­ni­cate stress or anx­i­ety.  Be aware that one can not rely on one sig­nal from the dog.  A wag­ging tail does not nec­es­sar­ily indi­cate a friendly dog.  You must take a look at the “whole dog. ” While many signs of anx­i­ety in a dog are com­mon behav­iors, look­ing at the dog as a whole lets you know whether he is anxious,fearful or stressed.  A dog with a tucked tail, by itself, doesn’t tell you very much.  How­ever, if the dog’s tail is tucked, its tongue is flick­ing, the ears are pulled back and he is look­ing away and yawn­ing, you have a stressed and anx­ious dog on your hands.  Stay away.  With respect to child safety I would rec­om­mend that you take a look at the web­site, www.doggonesafe.com.

We can also use our under­stand­ing of canine behav­ior to avoid prob­lems with a dog.  Do you or your child know what to do if approached by a strange dog or a dog that is being overly play­ful?  Don’t look at the dog and stand per­fectly still.  Dogs are attracted to move­ment.  If you aren’t mov­ing and you aren’t star­ing, the dog will gen­er­ally lose inter­est.  They will usu­ally move on to some­thing that is mov­ing and is more inter­est­ing to them.

Clicker Training, What’s Up With That?

If you have spent any amount of time around peo­ple that train dogs, you have prob­a­bly heard the term “clicker train­ing” asso­ci­ated with cor­rec­tion or force free train­ing.  But, clicker train­ing sounds kind of funny, doesn’t it?   Why does, “clicker train­ing” sound funny?  In an arti­cle in the New Yorker pub­lished in 1936, H. L. Mencken, argues that “k words” are funny. “K, for some occult rea­son, has always appealed to the oafish ris­i­bles of the Amer­i­can plain peo­ple, and its pres­ence in the names of many … places has helped to make them joke towns … for exam­ple, Kanka­kee, Kala­ma­zoo, Hobo­ken, Hohokus, Yonkers, Squee­dunk, “Stink­town” and Brooklyn.”

In Neil Simon’s play The Sun­shine Boys, Willy Clark (played by Wal­ter Matthau), is lec­tur­ing his nephew, Ben about what words are funny, “[W]ords with a k in it are funny. Alka-Seltzer is funny. Chicken is funny. Pickle is funny. All with a k. Ls are not funny. Ms are not funny.”

So here we are iden­ti­fy­ing our­selves with a word that has two “k” sounds in it, “clicker-training.” It sort of sounds like a kid’s game.  “Let’s go out­side and play “clicker.”  The thing is, the clicker, used prop­erly, is one of the most pow­er­ful tools used by behav­ioral researchers and ani­mal train­ers.  Sci­en­tific research has shown that clicker train­ing is the most effec­tive method of train­ing any animal.

Maybe we should call the clicker some­thing dif­fer­ent.  What if we call it an “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker?”  Now, that doesn’t sound so funny, does it?  What does the “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” actu­ally do?  As explained by Kathy Sdao, a cer­ti­fied applied ani­mal behav­ior­ist who was hired by the U.S. Navy to train dol­phins for defense-related open-ocean tasks, the “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker:”

1.    Pin­points a behav­ioral instant; a moment of mus­cle move­ment,
2.    Informs the ani­mal that the move­ment met the trainer’s cur­rent cri­te­rion; that is, his behav­ior was “enough to earn a reinforcement.

That is pretty pre­cise, behav­ioral jar­gon.  An “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” trainer (a clicker trainer) clicks a behav­ior that he or she likes and then gives a reward.  It is that simple.

An exam­ple of “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” train­ing would be teach­ing a dog to sit.  How can we get a dog to sit with­out pulling his neck up with a leash and push­ing his butt down to the ground?  Remem­ber, we use only pos­i­tive rein­force­ment – no pulling the leash up while push­ing the butt down.  We also do not engage in any leash pop­ping.  So, what do we do?  A way to begin “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” train­ing is to “cap­ture” a behav­ior.  Let’s say we want to teach our dog to sit.  As an “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” trainer,” you  can just go into a room with the dog and sit there or stand there with our trusty “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” and wait for the dog to sit.  Dogs do sit down, even­tu­ally.   CLICK the moment the butt hits the floor and then give her a rein­force­ment (usu­ally a tasty treat).  You don’t say any­thing and, not star­ing at your dog, just wait for another sit.  Your dog sits and BAMM, you CLICK and TREAT.  If you do that a lit­tle while, most dogs fig­ure out that they can train you to give them a treat if they just put their butts on the floor.  Your dog will sit there munch­ing on his treat,wondering why he didn’t think of that before.  One of the mirac­u­lous things about this type of train­ing is that once the dog becomes “clicker savvy,” she will begin offer­ing behav­iors to “fool” you into giv­ing her treats.

It is rec­om­mended that at the out­set of your train­ing jour­ney with your dog that you get some help from a qual­i­fied “instan­ta­neous, audi­ble, behav­ioral event marker” trainer (okay, we’ll just call it clicker train­ing for now on).  As an exam­ple, that would be me, of course.  At first, the most impor­tant clicker train­ing learner is you.  While it does not take a great deal of time to learn how to use a clicker, it has to be learned.  The clicker is not a toy or a gim­mick.  It is a pre­cise tool that must be used prop­erly.  You will be learn­ing the most effec­tive way to train any type of animal.

As you may imag­ine, a num­ber of train­ers say that they are clicker train­ers and use force free meth­ods.  The fact is, just because you walk around the room with a clicker in one hand and a leash in the other does not make you a clicker trainer.  No more than hav­ing a license to drive a car makes you a race­car dri­ver or hav­ing flipped burg­ers in a fast food restau­rant makes you a chef.  (And I have flipped a few burg­ers in my day.)  Karen Pryor Acad­emy grad­u­ates (of which, I am one, www.karenpryoracademy.com) have com­pleted an inten­sive, six month train­ing pro­gram refin­ing their skills as totally force free, pos­i­tive rein­force­ment, clicker train­ers.  We are Karen Pryor Acad­emy Cer­ti­fied Train­ing Part­ners and can lose our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion if we stray from the tenets of the Acad­emy.  This is the only pro­gram to my knowl­edge that rigidly adheres to these types of stan­dards.  The Karen Pryor Acad­emy will not grad­u­ate a stu­dent or will with­draw the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of any grad­u­ate if the stan­dards are not met.

One last point (at least for this post) about force free, pos­i­tive rein­force­ment, clicker train­ing.  If you have ever expe­ri­enced other dog train­ing pro­grams, you are aware of how stressed a dog can become just prior to and dur­ing the train­ing.  No crea­ture likes to be pun­ished and tra­di­tional train­ing is pun­ish­ment.  You will truly be amazed to be around a dog impa­tient and enthu­si­as­tic to begin a train­ing ses­sion.  Train­ing is work but wouldn’t you rather work for a car­rot than a stick?  It is awfully nice to be able to look for­ward to going to work.

Give gen­tle dog train­ing a chance.  It can’t hurt.
You will become closer to your dog as you have not imag­ined.  Your dog becomes your train­ing part­ner, not a servant.

Dog Whisperer? Or, Why Should I Be Clicking?

As some­one who is inter­ested in dog train­ing or ani­mal train­ing in gen­eral, you have prob­a­bly heard of the term, “horse whis­perer.”  It is a term given to peo­ple that have learned to train horses with­out using harsh train­ing meth­ods.  His­tor­i­cally, many peo­ple have trained horses by using rough train­ing meth­ods.  “The horse is an ani­mal that sur­vives in the wild by flee­ing and kick­ing at preda­tors that are attack­ing it.  A horse is all about flight, and fear is the dom­i­nant emo­tion.”  Tem­ple Grandin, Ani­mals Make Us Human, 105 (2009).  Train­ing horses using harsh meth­ods is sort of a sink or swim phi­los­o­phy.  It is cer­tainly pos­si­ble to force a horse to com­ply using these meth­ods but it leaves many dam­aged horses in its wake.  It does appear to be counter-intuitive to train a flee­ing, fright­ened ani­mal by using harsh meth­ods.  “Horse wel­fare depends on good train­ing.  If every­one could train and han­dle horses the way the horse whis­per­ers and the old-time horse­men do, lots fewer horses would be put down.” id.

How is all of this related to dog train­ing, you might ask?  The term “horse whis­perer” describes a train­ing tech­nique that is com­pletely devoid of harsh train­ing prac­tices.  The horse whis­per­ers are keen observers of ani­mal behav­ior that use pos­i­tive rein­force­ment in order to train their ani­mals.  Horse whis­per­ers do not kick, hit or shock their trainees to per­form desired behav­ior.  As you might be aware, there are peo­ple in the dog train­ing com­mu­nity that call them­selves “dog whis­per­ers.”  Peo­ple who use tra­di­tional train­ing meth­ods are able to elicit desired behav­ior from dogs.  But kick­ing a dog regard­less of how gen­tly it might be done, is not whis­per­ing.  Yank­ing on the leash is not whis­per­ing.  Pop­ping the leash is not whis­per­ing.  Dog train­ers have used harsh meth­ods and neg­a­tive rein­force­ment when train­ing dogs for cen­turies but call it what it is, pun­ish­ment.  And pun­ish­ment is not whispering.

But why should you use a train­ing method that is gen­tle in nature?  Is it more humane?  Of course it is.  But for some­one that sim­ply desires a well trained dog, that per­son requires the fastest most effec­tive train­ing method pos­si­ble.  Believe it or not, pos­i­tive rein­force­ment or “clicker train­ing” is not only cor­rec­tion and pun­ish­ment free, it is the most effec­tive and fastest way to train an ani­mal.  Let me repeat that, clicker train­ing, done prop­erly, is the fastest and most effec­tive way to train an animal.

Clicker train­ing has evolved from research con­ducted by the renowned psy­chol­o­gist, B. F. Skin­ner.  Expand­ing on ear­lier work done by researchers, Skin­ner, while a grad­u­ate stu­dent at Har­vard, found that he could change the behav­ior of rats by giv­ing them food rewards for press­ing a lever.  This research grew into the sci­ence of  “oper­ant con­di­tion­ing.”   In 1951 Skin­ner described the use of the clicker in his paper, How To Teach Ani­mals, and con­tin­ued with his work into the 1960s which included work­ing with pigeons.

Research has found that the most effec­tive teach­ing occurs when a pos­i­tive behav­ior is observed and the learner then receives a reward or rein­force­ment imme­di­ately for that spe­cific behav­ior.  Oper­ant con­di­tion­ing or clicker train­ing may be the most pow­er­ful train­ing method avail­able.  I am aware that this is a bold state­ment; how­ever, years of sci­en­tific study and prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence have proven it to be true.  Sim­ply stated, clicker train­ing is a sys­tem of pos­i­tive rein­force­ment in com­bi­na­tion with an event marker.  This method of teach­ing has turned out to be effec­tive for all crea­tures includ­ing dogs, horses and peo­ple.  Every­one responds well to rewards given for good behav­ior.  Excel­lent teach­ers and par­ents use this method instinctively.

Karen Pryor was a founder of Hawaii’s Sea Life Park and Oceanic Insti­tute where she served as cura­tor and pio­neer­ing dol­phin trainer.  Pos­i­tive rein­force­ment is used to train dol­phins and as Karen says, “You can’t pop a dolphin’s leash.”  Karen Pryor was one of the first peo­ple to intro­duce clicker train­ing to the dog train­ing com­mu­nity in the 1990’s.

As noted above, tra­di­tional train­ing relies heav­ily on neg­a­tive rein­force­ment, euphemisti­cally referred to as “cor­rec­tions.”  A prob­lem with neg­a­tive rein­force­ment is that while it will stop ongo­ing behav­ior, there is no pre­dictable future out­come.  Neg­a­tive rein­force­ment may work and many ani­mal train­ers con­tinue to use it, but pun­ish­ment actu­ally slows down learn­ing and restricts cre­ativ­ity.  An ani­mal that expects pun­ish­ment will do the min­i­mal amount expected and will not attempt new behav­iors because they are afraid of being “corrected.”

The prob­lem with train­ing ani­mals is that they, obvi­ously, do not speak Eng­lish.  With all of the behav­iors exhib­ited by an ani­mal, how do we com­mu­ni­cate to them that a spe­cific behav­ior they just exhib­ited deserved the reward.  By the time you get to the dog with the reward, he doesn’t know why he is get­ting the treat.  (Although, he loved get­ting the treat.)  Can you imag­ine the dif­fi­culty get­ting a fish to a dol­phin the moment she makes a desired jump?  That is where the clicker comes in.  The clicker marks the desired behav­ior at the moment it occurs giv­ing the trainer the time needed to get to the learner and offer the reward.

How would this method of teach­ing work in train­ing a dog?  I think we all can agree that most dogs like treats.  In clicker train­ing the dog first learns that when he hears the click-click sound he gets a treat.  After that, while in a room with his trainer, the puppy is walk­ing around the room and sits down.  That behav­ior is “marked” by his trainer with a click and then he is treated.  The dog is think­ing, “What was that all about?” He walks around some more and hap­pens to sit down.  Again he is clicked and treated.  After a cou­ple more times of click­ing and treat­ing he starts catch­ing on to some­thing.  If he sits down he gets food.  This is great and he starts sit­ting down all over the place.  At this point (and this is a major dif­fer­ence between clicker train­ing and tra­di­tional train­ing) he learns that the behav­ior is called sit.  He learns the cue (com­mand) of “sit” after he learns to sit.  Soon after that a dog will start try­ing other behav­iors to see if that will get him a treat.  He is learn­ing hap­pily.  That is clicker train­ing in a nut­shell.   By the way, once the behav­ior is learned, you will not need the clicker any more for that par­tic­u­lar behavior.

If you give your­self the chance to learn clicker train­ing, you will actu­ally become the dog whisperer.

Remem­ber, give gen­tle dog train­ing a chance.  It can’t hurt.