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.