CGC In Prison

I was recently asked to visit the Curran-Fromhold facil­ity which is part of the Philadel­phia Prison Sys­tem. My good friend, Nicole Larocco (the for­mer head of behav­ior and train­ing for the PSPCA), is part of a new pro­gram in the prison that was ini­ti­ated by Mar­ian March­ese. Inmates with no pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence with dog train­ing are […]

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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 […]

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Forewarned is Forearmed — Hugging and Kissing Dogs

Chil­dren hug­ging and kiss­ing dogs are two of the most com­mon rea­sons for dog bites. Dogs are not pri­mates and inter­pret hug­ging and peo­ple star­ing into their eyes as threat displays.

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Clicker Training, What’s Up With That?

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.

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Dog Whisperer? Or, Why Should I Be Clicking?

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.

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