My experience with group classes is pretty limited.    Unfortunately, that limited experience has not, up until this point, exposed me to knowledge or skills that I didn’t already have a firm grasp on, so I felt like both Bradley and I were bored and wasting our time.  I’m very happy to say that is not the case with this class.  Heavy emphasis is being placed on teaching handlers the basics of clicker training and shaping.  Music to my ears!

Befitting to a foundations class, we are truly working from the ground up.  When I say the skills we’re learning and practicing are basic, I mean it.  But they are laying the foundation for effective handling once we’re ready to run an agility course.

Here’s a short video of a simple turn that took some time for us to get used to manipulating.  As easy as it looks, the footwork directly conflicts with the manner in which we normally take turns, so we got off to an awkward start.

We’ve been totally at home with the various exercises that have been presented to us, including shaping some new, simple behaviors, shaping interaction with various objects, demonstrating basic obedience skills and homework like working on loading the clicker and teaching some new behaviors, like bow, ‘sit pretty,’ turning in alternate directions and our own behavior shaping ideas.

Our homework this week is to teach our dogs a new behavior, using shaping.  I was having a hard time deciding on what to teach Bradley.  I wanted to come up with something interesting.  I was stuck though, so I decided to work on solidifying Bradley’s proficiency at the tricks we’ve started to work on.  With all the the training I’ve done with Bradley, there are very, very few parlor tricks that Bradley knows.  Almost everything I’ve taught him has a practical purpose.  I decided to let go of that, in this context, to simply allow us to get what we’re supposed to get out of the assignment- mastery building, not task training.

Humbled By Shaping
Bradley is a quick learner and a willing worker.  He excels at learning through clicker training and has learned the majority of service dog tasks that he knows through clicker training.  As I set out to work on our assignment to work on a new behavior, this evening, I took our overwhelming success rate for granted and was taken aback when we hit a speed bump.

The task: Roll over.
Probably second to giving paw, rolling over is one of the most common tricks that dog lovers tend to just assume a dog knows how to perform. It’s such a common behavior for a dog to learn, it’s almost as if people are under the impression that dogs are born knowing how to perform the trick on cue.  I can’t even count the number of dogs I’ve taught to roll over; while I have always used luring, I haven’t always utilized the method of shaping.  I set out to teach Bradley how to roll over, I fell back on the familiar tool of luring with a treat.  Already in high drive mode from earlier in the training session, Bradley had other things in mind, besides following the lure.

He was ecstatic.  True to his die-hard-clicker-training-loving soul, he was throwing off every single behavior he could think of that we had worked on recently.  Offered behaviors are my favorite part of clicker training.  They’re also Bradley’s favorite part.  At this point, however, he was way ahead of himself!  He was offering behaviors from lying on his side, bowing, twirling in circles- to everything in between.  Adorable as it was, I noticed a feeling creeping up that should never be a welcome guest in the context of clicker training: frustration.

Fortunately, I had mindfulness on my side and was able to gently let go of the approaching frustration, take a step back and evaluate how to proceed so as not to communicate any frustration to Bradley.  I knew that if frustration was present, the training session would have to end.

I was able to identify the first roadblock that we were experiencing; Bradley was not paying attention to the intended lure.  It wasn’t a matter of refusing food because of stress.  He was simply going a million miles per hour and leaving me, kibble in hand, in the dust.  After identifying that problem, I was able to set him up for success in following the lure and then had the opportunity to mark and reinforce that piece of the behavior.  He was able to reel himself in, slow down, and keep his eye on the prize.

Once he was consistently following the lure, I still had to take baby steps.  We had a major success, when he finally stopped doing entirely incompatible behaviors to rolling over, like offering a lie on his opposite side.  From that point on, I was able to mark every little step in the right direction, as he brought his head toward the lure, putting himself in a more compatible position for rolling over.  He got jackpots for rolling onto a hip or a shoulder and got the biggest, final jackpot reward for rolling all the way over.

Setting out to accomplish this task, I never would have thought that it would have taken so much effort and calculation to get Bradley to the point at which we concluded the session.  From a learning and bonding perspective, I can wholeheartedly affirm that I’d rather it have gone the way it did than have achieved immediate, almost thoughtless success.

Training sessions aren’t only for the dogs

A bribe is when you have to pay someone before they get the job done. Not too long ago there was a county corruption scandal in my area. The local politician had received a free deck or some such thing before a company could get a contract with the county.

On the other hand, when you go to work you perform a job each and every day. You do this knowing that at the end of a certain time period you will receive a paycheck. You do the job first and then receive the pay.

Using a clicker or a marker simply signals to the dog that they are going to get paid for a job well done. Unlike food bribes, the task has to be completed before being paid.

What about the associations we make with a particular smell or food from our past? White Shoulders perfume makes me think of one of my grandmothers. Buckwheat pancakes and Collies make me think of my other grandmother. These are wonderful, feel good associations.

Just as we make associations so do our dogs. Dogs are constantly making associations. It is part of the learning process. Unlike us, where some of our associations can be complicated, dogs tend to make very direct simple associations.

I was once working with a student that at one time had a very good and reliable “stay” cue.  Then one day the dog would no longer hold a stay. When I started asking her about what might have happened to the dog during training my student suddenly remembered that the dog had been doing a down stay when it was stung by a bee. Yes, that will do it! The association made by that dog was that in a stay bad things can happen.

Another client had a dog that was highly reactive/aggressive towards other dogs when on walks. When I met up with them at the local park the dog was wearing a prong and shock collar. The dog had quickly learned that bad things happen when strange dogs were around.

On the other hand, when you “click” and then give the dog a treat, the dog will quickly associate the sound of the click with something pleasurable. Hearing a click means good things will happen.

My oldest Rottweiler comes running when he hears the refrigerator door open. Why? because the refrigerator door opening proceeds him getting his dinner. He has learned to associate the door opening with dinner, his favorite pastime.

These associations are why it is imperative that when we work with our dogs we see it from their prospective first. We should ask ourself what kind of associations will be made. Will it be to our dog’s benefit or detriment? How will it effect them down the road? By answering these questions a head of time we can save ourselves and our dogs lost time and frustration. Now, instead, we can set them up for success.

What You Will Need:

• Nylon Long Line(20-30ft)
• Treat Bag
• Treats
• Clicker

Get Started:

1. Take your dog out into your backyard or a open field to begin. Drop the line on the ground so your dog can wander as he pleases, but make sure the end is close by.
2. Let your dog wander as he pleases, make no noises, don’t give any signals. Everytime your dog looks in your direction, or looks at you click and throw a treat out to him. If your dog tries to go more than 15 feet away from you step on the long line to stop him. Release it as he comes closer. Keep repeating this exercise for 5-10 minutes.
3. Eventually your dog will come up to you, possibly sit and wait. Click and treat. If your dog stays your ready to push to the next step. Start walking around at a normal pace, but continue to ignore your dog, giving no commands or signals. Continue to click and throw treats down as he follows.
4. Once your dog is following you around, stoping when you stop, etc add some difficulties. Go to higher distracting areas, have other dogs play while your working, have some friends play nearby. Or you can add difficulty to the task at hand, vary your pace, stop suddenly, turn around real quick etc. Your goal is to have your dog choosing to follow you and stay by your side.
5. Keep practicing! If you are in an enclosed area you can even take your dog off the leash and try all of the above. Either way it will help you and your dog bond and will infinately help your training in the future.

This is a very simple exercise but probably one of the most powerful I use to date. The difference here is you are not making your dog follow you or listen to you, he is deciding to do it on his own. This teaches your dog to want to learn and to want to please you, which is one of the best things you can teach your dog.

Have fun with this, and remember your dog can do no wrong in this exercise. Let me know if this helps you out!
~Nicky

So recently my 8 month old husky Mason set into his teen phase and has been getting a little more daring with his challenges. Usually he gives in, especially when my husband was around. Well my husband went up to Michigan for 10 days and took Sam with him and Mason was not pleased at all.

He became more unruly each day, and now that he is over 60 lbs it was becoming a bit of an issue. His favorite things to do were to run full speed through the house and tackle me, he was grabbing my sleeve when neighbors and other dogs approached, and went back to completely pulling me over when I was walking him without his Halti, and would tear up stuff if I left him alone at all. I was able to take back control of the situation each time, but it was occuring more and more often, and it was completely unacceptable in my eyes.

So enough was enough and I went on a full restriction training program for him. The rules I set were as followed:

1. He was either in his kennel, outside, or had his halti on and was tied to my waist. He was required to follow me around were ever I went, and had no say in the matter.

2. He was never left out of his kennel unsupervised. I gave him no chance to chew or destroy anything in the house.

3. His training sessions doubled, and I made him work on longer sit/down stays for the Nothing In Life Was Free training program.

4. He was taken for more frequent walks with his halti on, and only got to continue walking if he was not pulling.

No exaggeration, he did a complete turn around in 1 weekend. I used the Halti to give me an advantage against his strength, and him following me around all day let him know I was the leader. He started listening to every command I gave him, even if he had done it 5 times already. He was listening to everything I said, and we didn’t have any further issues.

As I gave him more leeway he still continued to behave, and actually was doing a lot better than he ever has in his life. We are back to his old lifestyle now and still have not had any problems what-so-ever.  I think he just needed a quick attitude adjustment, thats all.

So for all of you who think your dog is out of control, unruly, or just going through there teen phase, give this program a try. Mason is the only dog I’ve needed to attempt it with but I’m sure the results could be repeated.

If anyone does try this program please feel free to leave a comment and let us know how it worked out, I would be very curious to hear from you.

Good luck if you face similar issues, and remember that it will pass with training and patience.

My foster Kato and my old Aussie Jake

A couple years ago I was working with a dog trainer named Jeni Buehler. She taught the “Nothing In Life Is Free” training program in her obedience classes and it not only expedited training, but also the dogs were listening a lot better to their owners. The philosophy is simple, takes little time out of your day, yet gives amazing results. So I thought I would share it today and spread the knowledge across the web.

In the “Nothing In Life Is Free” training program your dog will perform a trick for everything it wants to do. It’s reward is the satisfaction of getting what it wants. This will help them listen to you whether you have treats or not in the long run, and will help establish yourself as the alpha.

Here are a few examples:

• Your dog must sit/stay for 3 seconds before its allowed to go outside.
• Your dog must lay down before it goes for a walk.
• Your dog must down stay for 10 seconds before it is allowed to eat.

Sit/Stay During Walks

Really the applications are endless. You can work on what ever tricks or commands you want, in any situation. I find this to be a great way to work on sit/down stays, choosing random amounts of time. But it’s really up to you.

This is just a simple way to make training that much easier. I hope this has helped, and let me know your results!

Without further adieu here is a list of possible treats:

• Cooked Chicken
• Ground Beef
• Pet Botanics Dog Food Rolls (Can be found cheapest at PetSmart)
• Freeze Dried Liver (found at pet stores, VERY high reward)
• Cheese
• Peanut Butter(use a spoon)
• Baby Carrots
• Vitadrops(Can be found at PetSmart)
• Steak
• Ham
• Turkey
• Lunch Meat
• Hot Dogs(High Reward)
• Treats From Pet Stores (small, chewy treats work best)
• Dried Salmon Treats (Found at some petstores HIGH reward

Most of your training treats can be taken out of the fridge, but if your looking for actual dog treats I’ve found PetSmart and http://www.DrsFosterSmith.com to have the least expensive treats.

So switch your mixtures often and find out which treats your dog responds better to. The more they like thee treat the more eager they will be to work for it. So go out and experiment and see what works for you.

Have you begun training and started noticing your pup getting  a little gut?

Don’t worry, it happens to a lot of people. What I’m going to show you is how to balance your dogs diet to allow multiple training sessions a day.

First lets start with size:

All the treats you give your dog should be cut into small pieces for training purposes. Each piece should be about the size of a piece of kibble. You want your dog to just get a taste of it, this will allow longer training sessions and less weight gain.

Portions:

Treats should be no more than 10 % of your dogs daily diet.  With that being said I like to use a mixture in my treat pouch as followed:

1/4 meaty treats
1/4 cheese or other type of treat
1/2 dog food

I mix it up in a bag and let it sit for a good 30 minutes, or mix a big bag and leave it in the fridge for future training sessions. When I take a piece out it all smells the same, so your dog won’t care whether it gets kibble, cheese, or a treat. This allows more training sessions since the kibble is part of his daily diet anyways. I just feed him less during his meals.

This works really well, you just need to find a couple variations of mixes to keep it fresh and new to your dog. You might want to check out my post with a list of treats to get some ideas on different options.

Does this sound like you? 2, 3, maybe more dogs in your household, all of which you would love to be well mannered and trained dogs? If this is you have you attempted, and possibly failed at trying to use clicker training with your dogs?

Having multiple dogs in a household does not mean clicker training is out of the question. But you will need to work with only one dog at a time while training. I have two dogs in my home, and there are plenty of opportunities to train both of them each day. Here is a list of options for separating training sessions:

• Put one dog in it’s kennel while you train the other.
• If you don’t have another kennel you can put your other dog(s) in a separate room while you train.
• Take only one dog on a walk at a time. While walking take short breaks to do a couple tricks and continue on.
• If you have a roommate, a boy/girlfriend, or significant other you can both train a dog at the same in the same room.
• Either train your dog out back, or put the other dog(s) in the back while you train.

The key is to only work with one dog at a time. One person per dog. It’s okay if your dog hears the clicker, he will learn that he only gets rewarded when you are working with him.

Working with only one dog at a time in isolation helps develop a better bond with your dog, and allows them to focus more on the task at hand. If you even take 5 or 10 minutes to work with each dog every day you will be able to see great progress. It may also help get better control of them while they are all together. So it may be rough at times but it will provide a more peaceful home in the long run.

So have fun and keep at it! Whatever goals you want with your dogs are only a few training sessions away.

Drawn on a cave wall, this image depicts a man and his dog hunting.

Sheepherding goes back a long way. I mean, a really, really long way. To get a better idea of the tradition of sheepherding, think of this: dogs were domesticated roughly 15,000 years ago (new evidence suggests dogs may have begun their domestication as long as 35,000 years ago, but there is still much debate). Sheep have been domesticated for 10,000 years. And although humans didn’t discover the wool spinning process until about 3,500 B.C., sheep were incredibly important in the lives of our very distant ancestors. They were a source of food and clothing and thus, they were an early form of currency. They’re still a form of currency in many non-western societies.

From the Ancient Egyptian world, this tile piece depicts a dog on leash.

Almost since man had sheep, dogs were there herding them. Ever heard a story set in Ancient Egypt with a biblical shepherd tending his flock right alongside ever faithful Fido? Yep, that’s a depiction of what eventually became your Border Collies, your Australian Shepherds, and, of course, your German Shepherds.

Every breed of herding dog has its own history, and every country has its own mythologies to go along with herding. For brevity’s sake, I will focus on the German Shepherd here.

As most of us know, our German Shepherds are a relatively “new” breed. They first appeared on the scene in Germany in 1899 when Max von Stephanitz, an ex-cavalry captain and former veterinary student purchased a dog that he deemed was the epitome of what a working dog should be. He named the dog Horand von Grafrath and named the breed Deutscher Schaferhund, the German Shepherd Dog, and thus, the history of the German Shepherd began.

After the founding of the German Shepherd Dog, all other sheepherding dogs in Germany began to be called Aldeutsche Schaferhunde or “Old German Shepherd Dogs”. Out with the old and in with the new. The versatile new breed didn’t take long to spread across the continent, making its way across the channel in 1914 and appearing in the United States around the same time.

By 1908, when the first German Shepherd, Queen of Switzerland, was registered in the United States, America had already developed its own culture and mythos of herding. The US conducted its first herding trials in Philadelphia (represent!) in 1880, and it didn’t take long for the German Shepherd to be incorporated into the working scene in the US.

The herding breeds are typically split into two categories, the “eye” dogs (most notably, the Border Collie, the top picture below) and the “upright” dogs (like the German Shepherd, the bottom picture below). However, the GSD is unusual even in comparison with other “upright” dogs in its approach to herding. For example, the GSD nips and bites onto the side of the neck of the sheep instead of the ankles or legs. This, of course, makes some human shepherds nervous, and therein lie some of the problems.

This Border Collie is displaying the "eye" behavior they are so well-known for. Collies and other "eye" dogs use this technique to intimidate sheep.

This GSD is tending the outskirts of the flock. Unlike the Border Collie, the GSD uses his size and strength to his advantage when tending his flock.

Unlike most of the newer dog sports, herding goes way back. People have been herding with their dogs for thousands of years, and even though the German Shepherd Dog is a relatively newer breed, his ancestors are old, his blood is rich, and his instinct runs deep. He is incredibly intelligent, he is bred to make decisions on his own, and he is devastatingly powerful. And while all of these attributes are considered highly valuable in herding, they can also be a danger to the livestock and the human shepherd if the dog isn’t handled appropriately.

For these reasons, it has been traditionally accepted in herding circles that while you might be able to train your German Shepherd Dog to run through a tunnel or leap off a dock or hop on a table and lay down using positive reinforcement, you cannot and should not train your dog to herd using those same methods.

A clicker trained GSD jumping through a hoop during an agility trial.

Well, I have to respectfully disagree.

First of all, if I were to criticize any of the dog sports for anything, I would have to say that I criticize the herders for snobbery and elitism. They have the same attitude that they claim to disdain in the show circuits. They point fingers and accuse the show world of “distorting” and “corrupting” the breed (which I wholeheartedly agree that they did), but then they turn their noses up at anything that may force them to step away from their traditional mentality. Nowhere else have I seen such close-mindedness and hypocrisy than I have seen in just my little time spent in the herding world.

I have talked to herding trainers who laughed in my face when I told them I wanted to train using positive reinforcement methods. I have been told I was a fool and that I was in way over my head. I have also, interestingly, been told that herding dogs should be able to think for themselves and make their own decisions while the trainer nonchalantly backhands the dog across the face for breaking a heeling position.

I have been to at least half a dozen herding facilities so far, and every single one of them have pictured the straight back, working line German Shepherd on their website, but their walls are plastered with pictures of the sloped back, frog dog German Shepherd of the show ring. Blue ribbons hang on every wall, most of them, ironically, not herding ribbons, but conformation ribbons from various Kennel Club shows. So much for those vicious attacks about destroying the breed, but I guess, if you can’t beat them, join them, right?

"Working line" or "Straight back" German Shepherd

Most recently, I was told by a trainer at a herding facility that my five month old German Shepherd puppy, Shelby, “walked funny”, because she doesn’t have “the correct conformation for the breed standard” (the dog depicted above this paragraph is a ”working line” or ”straight back” German Shepherd, the dog depicted below is a “show quality” or “sloped back” German Sepherd).  I just rolled my eyes and smiled and responded that she wasn’t AKC registered either (that got a collective gasp from the group). “But she’s purebred right?” I nodded, and everyone seemed to take a step back from my dog who had, apparently, just developed leprosy. In the back of my mind, I chuckled and thought, “Well, at least my dog won’t have bone problems, and I’m pretty sure she could run your ‘working’ dogs under the table.”

"Show Quality", "Show Line" or "Sloped Back" German Shepherd

I wasn’t too concerned about what the herding people had to say about Shelby or her conformation or even about how large she was (“She’s five months, I thought she had to be at least seven, don’t tell me this is one of those 120 pound German Shepherds I keep hearing about!”). I could take all the slights because this facility assured me that they taught herding using positive reinforcement. I didn’t have to like anyone; I just had to learn what I needed to learn to compete with Shelby in herding trials. From talking with over a dozen herding trainers and going to at least five different facilities, I knew at this point that I probably wasn’t going to like anyone in these circles, but that was fine. The only “person” that mattered was Shelby.

Herding people remind me a lot of horse people, by the way. Everyone knows everything about everything and you know nothing. And if you don’t have daddy’s or hubby’s platinum Visa in your pocket and a $120,000 pony on the lead rope, then you aren’t going to do well, because there is no way a “stable girl” with her rescued Thoroughbred could out-jump Princess with her champion line Warmblood. Guess what? I proved the horse people wrong, and Shelby and I will prove the herding people wrong too. And we’re going to do it using positive reinforcement.

While I have a bad taste in my mouth for the elitism surrounding the herding scene, I do see the foundation of why they don’t believe that clicker training will work for herding. For one, I don’t think a lot of herding people (and people in general, actually) know what it truly means to clicker train. There are a ton of arguments against positive reinforcement in herding, but I am going to take some of the main ones and try and debunk them:

1. In a long distance situation like herding, the dog will never be able to respond to a click, because they won’t be able to hear it.

True. But no one, not even titled herders, start a six month old puppy herding sheep at 100 yards away. They start small, and that’s when you use the clicker. You start with the basic commands on leash, at a close distance, with minimal distractions. You can teach these the same as you teach basic obedience, and if you can teach that with a clicker, then you can teach this. When you get further along, you begin to phase out the clicker, extend the distances and connect the behaviors. You can do this by connecting the clicks, one at a time. If you are still shaky about a particular behavior, you take it back a step, like with everything else. Or, you could always switch the clicker to a whistle, like dolphin trainers use, which can be heard at a long distance. You can’t physically correct your dog when he has made the mistake at 100 yards away either and with clicker training, at least he is going to have more of a desire to come back after the mistake has been made.

2. Herding is a high drive sport, and high drive sports can be dangerous. You need to be able to control your dog to protect the sheep, and physical corrections are the only way to have complete control over your dog.

True, herding is a high drive sport which can be dangerous to the handler and the livestock. True, you do need to be able to have complete control over your dog. False that the only way to accomplish this is through physical corrections. In some ways, clicker training actually makes more sense for herding than any of the other dog sports. Herding is different from agility and flyball and triebball and rally in that the dog cannot always rely on you to convey information. There are times that the dog must be able to think on his own. He must always check in with you, but he also needs to make small connections as to the “right” behavior and the “wrong” behavior. For example, if you are on the far side of the flock and one of your lambs wanders off and you can’t see it happen, but your dog can, he needs to know that he has to go bring that lamb back without any direction from you. Clicker training is far more effective at teaching the dog to think than physical correction training, as I have discussed before. As to the control issue, I think you will find that a dog is much more willing to work for you when there is a reward at the end instead of a correction. I have found that I have far more “control” over my dogs when I have the carrot in my hand instead of the stick (keep in mind that I have used both).

These German Shepherds are gently pushing a lost lamb back to its mother and its flock.

3. Working dogs are not motivated by food.

I have been hearing this more and more frequently recently, and it honestly shocks me. Really? That’s like saying that just because someone is an Olympic athlete and they enjoy running means that they don’t also enjoy pizza or ice cream. I mean, come on, really? While there are certainly some dogs who are more motivated by food than others, and there are dogs that prefer play over food, saying that “working dogs” as a whole are not motivated by food is ignorant and ridiculous. I don’t need any science or evolutionary theory to back that up either, all I need is to watch my dogs freak out over their special treats. Heck, just watching them drool over dinner is all the proof I need.

4. The herding dog must submit to his handler or he can’t be trusted not to kill the sheep.

This poses a ton of problems for me, most of which I have already addressed in other blogs. But the real problem I have with this theory in relation to herding is this – are these dogs the shepherds or the sheep? If they are the sheep, then it makes some sense that we treat them like prey animals, that is, we terrorize them with poking and prodding and pushing them into line. We put the lead animal in his or her “place” so the rest will follow (for the record, I don’t believe it is necessary to do any of this with prey animals either, but the point is particularly poignant with canines). But I was under the impression that they were the shepherds. Instead of terrorizing them with physical corrections and forcing them to exist constantly beneath you, shouldn’t you be raising them up so that they have the confidence to perform this highly difficult task? How is a dog that is constantly being told to submit supposed to break away from that mentality that has been ingrained in him and assume a position of confidence and leadership great enough to take on an animal that can weigh up to 450 pounds? How is he supposed to be the leader he needs to be to herd his flock when you are constantly telling him he is to be subservient? When on earth did the herding circles make the shepherds into the sheep?

The noble German Shepherd, a leader and protector of his flock, watches over them as the sun sets

So by now, I have probably lost a lot of you. If you’ve stuck in there with me, good for you, go give yourself a click and a chocolate chip cookie (after you’re done reading this last blog, of course). I could actually probably go on about this issue, but I think I’ve caused enough trouble for one week, so I will stop with this. The last issue I want to touch on is more a matter of personal pride and semantics than actual dog training, so I apologize in advance if this gets harsh. I don’t mean to go on the attack, but my pride has been wounded, so if you don’t agree with me, at least try to have a little pity for my bruised ego.

As a rule, I have always shied away from anything that I don’t understand and can’t be properly explained to me. When I can’t get a clear answer or a clear definition, I typically choose to see the point as moot. I have always been of the mind that if you don’t understand your position, then you can’t explain it. If you can’t explain it, no one else is going to understand it, and you certainly aren’t going to be able to understand anyone else’s point of view.

Not everyone is like me. A lot of people like the mystery shroud and the feeling of the unknown. I actually think I used to as well. When I was younger, I had a friend who told me that there was a quality about me which made me so ephemeral that she sometimes thought that if she reached out, she would be able to put her hand right through me. I was very wild, very free and very damaged, so I spent a lot of time hiding the pain behind a mask of carelessness. Over the years, I have spent a considerable amount of time trying to, not quash that quality, but contain it so that I am more capable of making myself sound convincing in the real world, making myself more solid, so to speak. I have moved out of the realm of childhood fairytales and magic and into the realm of realism and logic. As I have made this transition in my own life, I have become acutely aware of those who haven’t, and also of those who use their ephemeral quality not only to bend language, but to bend the truth to suit their own devices.

I heartily believe that Cesar Millan does this, to his great success. Some would be crass and call it manipulative, but I’m not going to do say that. I would say that he is capturing his ephemeral quality, applying it to his dog training methods, and making a ton of money. It’s a skill, we all have skills, he’s using his to be successful, and I don’t have any qualms with that. I think that’s one of the things that make this country great.

But for me, I don’t like what he has done. I don’t understand it, and I think that when you break it down, it is actually kind of insulting.

Let me start with the part that I don’t understand and move onto the part that just, quite frankly, pisses me off.

According to Cesar, you are to have “calm, assertive energy” when training your dog. I remember hearing that phrase for the first time and being stunned. I stared at the TV for a while and was awed. What a beautiful phrase that made absolutely no sense. I sat there and heard it repeated several dozen times and started to doubt myself. Was I really going to be shown up by someone who was speaking English as a second language? Did I really not know what assertive meant, or was my definition of calm off?

Of course, I did what most English majors with a little bit of beaten pride will do, I went to the books. I dug out my dictionary and sat down with it. Okay, my definition of calm was definitely correct (whew, how embarrassing would that have been?). Calm, as an adjective (as in, calm energy) means: “Not showing or feeling nervousness, anger or other emotions” (emphasis added). Some acceptable synonyms include the words “bland” “cool” “harmonious” “mild” “restful” and “waveless”. Antonyms include words like “excited” “fierce” “frenzied” “rough” “violent” and “wild”.

Okay, so maybe I was wrong, and I didn’t know what assertive meant, after all. Maybe that was the point that I missed on the SATs…I flipped to assertive and found this: “Having or showing a confident and forceful personality” also “aggressively self-assured”. Some acceptable synonyms include “assured” “confident” “domineering” “forceful” and “sure”. Antonyms include works “diffident” “quiet” and “shy”. And aggressive? What does it mean to be aggressive, actually? According to the dictionary it is to be: “Ready or likely to attack or confront”. Some synonyms include “attacking” “assailing” “disruptive” “invading” and “threatening”. The most common antonym for aggressive? You guessed it – “calm”.

So you’ll see the reason for my dismay and confusion when I saw these words grouped together in a neat little phrase that was supposed to convey your “energy” (another word that has some ephemeral, magic quality to it that I don’t quite understand, but I imagine correlates to the emotion you are supposed to capture when training with your dog, even though you are supposed to be calm and thus “not showing emotion”).

Let me get this straight, I thought, when I’m training my dog, I’m supposed to be both calm and aggressive, when they are, in fact, antonyms? How can I do opposite things at once? How confusing. If I’m confused, I’m most likely going to get my dog confused and mixed signals are bad enough when you are of the same species and speaking the same language, I can only imagine how frustrating that must be for the human/dog relationship.

All right, well, maybe he’ll explain it to me, how to be both of these things at once. So I continued watching, all night. It was a marathon night on Animal Planet, back when I had cable. But I heard no answer, no definition, no explanation to come with the mysterious phrase. It was as if I was just supposed to know what that meant. And suddenly, I understood why Cesar Millan’s show came with a warning not to try these methods at home without the help of a professional. Screw possibly injuring my dog, these complicated phrases were putting me at a serious risk of injuring my brain!

Semantics aside, however, what really makes me mad about the mysticism shroud cloaking Cesar Millan is that he makes me feel like I have no right to own dogs, let alone train them. I mean, how am I, as a dog owner, supposed to accomplish anything without the help of a professional, if I can’t even watch his show and try the techniques he uses at home? And furthermore, what if I don’t have the special “energy” he is talking about – I mean, I don’t even understand what it means, how am I supposed to know if I have it?

And if I don’t have it, does that mean that I can’t possibly train my dog? What’s the point of having a dog then? At this point in my inner monologue, I had a picture in my mind. There I was, I’d just brought home an eight week old puppy and plopped him down on the floor. He looked up at me, and I froze. What the hell am I supposed to do with this thing? Oh, well, sorry little guy, I don’t think I have the right energy to be a dog owner after all. I’m never going to be able to teach you not to pee on the carpet or chew on the furniture or any of that, because I don’t have the right “energy”. Off to the pound with you.

This is where Cesar Millan really pisses me off. I mean, how dare you try to tell me I need to have some kind of special energy or that I need to be different than how I am to train my dog? What kind of nonsense is that? I have loved animals all my life, I have loved every dog that has ever been in my life, and I like to think that they loved me too. But now you’re telling me that I maybe don’t have the right kind of energy to be a proper dog owner? Bullshit.

Enter the beauty of clicker training. As Patricia McConnell says in her book For the Love of a Dog, positive reinforcement training requires no physical abilities, it requires no experience, and it requires no semi-mythical, contradictory, ying and yang “energies”. It is, unfortunately, as she says, much more mundane than that. It does require many skills that you may not have, but that you can develop, and you can do all of that on your own, without the help of a “professional” (i.e. someone who is going to take your money to spew this shroud-covered, contradictory turn of phrase out at you and leave you more confused than you probably were to begin with).

Clicker training and positive reinforcement training do require work, time and effort. They require you to spend a lot of time simply watching your dog. They require you to take a leap of faith (or to trust in the science that is out there) and believe that your dog has emotions, maybe not as complex as yours, but that they do have them, and you need to respect that. They require you to accept your dog as a partner, and not a working beast of burden. They require the same amount of physical exercise as Cesar Millan recommends (one of his better points, actually, since there are so many morbidly obese dogs in this country, though that phrase “exercise, discipline, affection” is another issue I have), but they also require a great deal more mental exercise (as in, they require mental exercise). Sometimes, positive reinforcement training and clicker training require a little more expense, because you need to buy treats and perhaps puzzle games. Like traditional methods, they sometimes (though not always) require the expense of hiring a “professional” or purchasing a book or DVD, so that you can better understand and visualize the techniques and try them at home. But they are easily understandable and relatable. In fact, to the severe detriment of their businesses, every single positive reinforcement trainer I have worked with has continued to work with me at no cost. I can call them whenever I choose, send emails and texts, and they will give me their advice and their help for free, because they don’t want me to be confused and accidentally confuse the dog, or put too much on the dog too soon. They want me to understand completely, and if I don’t, they encourage me to ask questions, because they want me to ask myself questions when I am training with my dog.

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to make your own choice. I think I have offered full disclosure here for everyone to know what mine has been. But before you decide what method is right for you and your best friend, maybe you should ask yourself this question – do you want a friend, or do you want a subordinate?

One of the other common techniques I have seen Cesar Millan utilize, and that I strongly urge against using, is a technique sometimes referred to as “Flooding”.

Flooding is essentially forcing the animal into emotional overload until he shuts down and no longer reacts to the source of whatever fear he previously reacted to. We tend to call this same technique used in parenting as forcing the child “to confront his fears”.

We’ve all heard the story of the boy or girl who was afraid of swimming and/or the water. One day on a fishing trip, or hanging out on a dock near the lake, a parent (usually a father, sorry guys) pushes the child into the water where the child must either “sink or swim” – literally. Sometimes, swimming results, and sometimes, the parent must dive in with all his clothes on to save the child from drowning, while the other parent screams in horror and the child’s siblings snicker in the background.

At the end of this life lesson, the child either no longer has a fear of water, because the fear has literally been shocked out of him, or the child never goes anywhere near the water again and has to spend thousands of dollars in therapy later in life trying to work out deep seeded resentment toward his parents and daddy issues.

Think this same flurry of emotions and lasting impressions doesn’t happen in the mind of your canine companion? Think again.

Fear is one of the most basic emotions, and it is shared by all mammals, from rats to primates. Your canine compatriot is no exception. The consequences of fear can be terrible (as I discussed before and won’t get into here).

Flooding may seem like a good idea, because you’re the human, you have the superior brain, and you know that whatever your pup is afraid of isn’t going to hurt her. Maybe her fear is getting in her way, maybe it’s getting in yours. It’s hard to explain to a dog that the loud noises made by our 100 forms of technology aren’t going to hurt her. So why not just show her by forcing her to keep space with her fear until she gets over it? It makes sense. I know; I’ve done it.

I’ve seen flooding practiced most commonly with horses, so I will use an equine example here.

I’ve worked at half a dozen barns and at least three trail riding facilities in my life, but I remember this barn and this event in particular. Every day, multiple times a day, we would take a group of three to six inexperienced (mostly) people out for an hour or so walk through the woods. The horses we used for this were what horse people call “bomb proof” horses. They were typically older, slower and less sensitive. They were used to following the leader at a slow and steady pace no matter how hard the person on top of them kicked, screamed, squirmed, pulled on the bit or lashed them with the reins while pretending to be a cowboy. They’d all walked the same path a thousand times. They’d seen all manner of dogs, cats, horses and people. These were the kind of horses that could see a mountain lion and just stand there and blink. Like I said, bomb proof.

Jasper was just like the rest of them except that he was afraid of balloons. I’ve never heard the whole story, but the rumor was that when he was a colt, someone popped a balloon in his face, and he never quite recovered, which was fine, as barns don’t typically have many balloons. Except that one day, out on our usual trail, we came upon a child’s birthday party being held in one of the pavilions on the way. Naturally, there were a dozen or so children running around with balloons tied to their wrists.

Before I could dismount and get over to Jasper, and before the rear guide had even seen the danger, Jasper was rearing. The man riding him hit the ground with a thud, and Jasper ran all the way back to the barn. I got to do a thirty minute pony ride with the displaced (but thankfully uninjured) man on my more spirited mount, who fought me for control of the bit the whole way back.

The owner was not pleased with Jasper. He decided to end Jasper’s fear, but he didn’t have time to waste, as Jasper was a regular and favorite trail horse. He decided to flood him.

What seemed amusing at the time now actually frightens me to think about. What we did you should not only “not try at home”, but you should not try at all. And I mean ever.

Everyone present was an incredibly skilled and experienced horseman, but we shouldn’t have done this, because first and foremost, it was ridiculously dangerous. Second, it permanently damaged the horse. Of course, this was before I knew anything about positive reinforcement training, and this was just “how it was done” (and how it is still commonly done).

So poor Jasper got put in crossties in his stall, and someone deposited about a dozen helium balloons in there with him, then jumped out and slammed the door. I’ll never forget the way he screamed. After he ripped his crossties out of the wall, he slammed his whole body into the doors, rattling them out of the bottom tracks. He kicked the sides of the stall, and you could hear the wood splintering like bone. His chest heaved, foam poured out of his mouth, his eyes rolled. He looked like a madman.

After about a minute, everyone stopped laughing. I sat down on a hay bale. We waited. After a while, the kicking stopped, then the screaming. I’d like to say it was less than fifteen minutes, but I don’t know. It seemed like an eternity. But finally, all we could hear was Jasper’s heavy breathing. As his owner opened his stall door, he called him stubborn and took a drink from his water bottle. The plastic cracked.

I never participated in flooding again. It scared the shit out of me. For Jasper’s part, he never reacted around balloons again, but after a month or so, he was deemed an unfit trail horse and retired. He threw a woman after she took a drink from her water bottle and the plastic cracked.

I’ve seen flooding like this practiced to a lesser degree with dozens of horses. I’ve done it myself. Have a horse that’s afraid of loud noises? Bang a bunch of pots and pans outside his stall door until he’s calm. Have a horse that’s afraid of dogs? Tie him up near one and let it bark at him until he stands still.

I’ve also seen Cesar Millan do this with dogs. Have a dog that’s afraid of a particular floor surface? Drag him onto it and force him to walk. If he doesn’t, physically correct him. It’s a quick fix to fear.

Except it’s not. Because the fear doesn’t go away, it is only suppressed. And suppressed fear can easily be transferred onto something else, just like Jasper’s water bottle. Typically, the fear is transferred onto another environmental stimulus. Your dog may not be afraid of the linoleum, or the vacuum or the TV anymore, but he might be afraid of the sound of your sneakers, or the ceiling fan or the smell of a particular candle. Or, he may be afraid of you.

I’m glad that Jasper’s owner was kind enough to let him live out his days at his farm instead of selling him to the meat market, because he taught me a very valuable life lesson. What Jasper taught me was to be wary of the quick fixes, because sometimes, you get more than you bargained for.

(The Constant Battle Waged in the World of Dog Training)

          For the purposes of this post, I will refer to myself and my opinion as that of a positive “trainer”. This reference is because of the constrictions of the English language and the lack of a better term. I don’t train dogs professionally, as in, I don’t make money training dogs, and I don’t have an equivalent degree. I don’t make a living writing fiction either (though I would like to, and I do have a degree for that), but I do call myself a writer. I don’t think people should be defined by what they do to make money, but instead should be defined simply by what they do. I train dogs, my dogs, and I try to help people train their dogs. Therefore, I will define myself here as a dog trainer. I don’t represent clicker trainers as a whole, but I do clicker train. I study, I watch, I read, I learn, and I take the advice of the trainers and people I know who have more experience than I do. The opinion contained in this piece is mine, and mine alone. That’s the only opinion I know how to give.

First, I say with great enthusiasm and warmth, that I am glad to see people taking an interest in clicker training, in whatever capacity they choose to take an interest. In all honesty, the fact there are people who care enough to oppose, degrade, belittle or debate clicker training means that clicker training is officially on the dog training grid. That in itself is a huge accomplishment. Because for people to oppose you they must first notice you and being noticed means that people are listening.

So, let’s take a stroll through my opinion of clicker training and positive reinforcement based training. As a clicker trainer, a crossover trainer no less (that is, someone who has moved from another training method, typically a method that utilizes dominance theory and/or physical correction, to clicker training) I have personally been called “stupid”, “naïve”, “weak minded”, “unstable” and “insane”. I have been criticized by many for being “obsessed” with my dogs and unable to separate animals from people. I have been told I’m a hippie, a follower of the Green Party and a “PETA terrorist”. Let me clear a little of the record here.

I am a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, one of the best universities in the nation (also one of the most liberal). I am a card carrying member of the NRA and a registered Republican. Some of my closest friends are Muslim, but I am a devout Catholic who supports legalizing gay marriage and contraception. I argue for a living, but I hate confrontation. I don’t start fights, but if pushed to it, I will end them. Please stop trying to put me into a stereotype or a nice little box just because of the way I choose to train my dogs. I come from an upper middle class family, I live in a blue collar household, and I have been beyond poor. I am not that easy to understand, and you certainly can’t group me that simply. Of all the radical and stereotypically contradictory beliefs I hold, I find it strange that people choose to oppose and debate me on my dog training methods, but hey, if that’s what people want to hone in on, fine by me, let’s talk.

I am a staunch believer in clicker training and operant conditioning. I do believe clicker training can be used for every dog breed, age, size, past history and dog sport or job. I also think it can be used for all species of animal (including people).

Clicker training is unique in that it allows and encourages the dog to make his own decisions. Clicker training is not about the clicker. The clicker is simply a tool to get this process rolling. Many clicker trainers who have been working with a dog for an extended period of time no longer use a clicker with that dog. I hardly ever use it with my dog Smokey, who has been working with the clicker for over a year now.

A clicker is forgiving of the dog making a mistake. This means that the dog can make as many mistakes as he wants and try as many new behaviors as he can think of without getting punished for it. The only option for him is to keep trying and eventually, get a reward. As you have probably experienced in your own life, oftentimes, you learn faster and retain information longer by making mistakes and working toward the right solution. In using clicker training, when the dog makes a mistake he isn’t punished physically, but he doesn’t receive the reward that he wants. His natural response is to keep trying until he gets it right and makes you click and give him the treat, because he wants the treat (this is why the value of the reward is so important, if he doesn’t want the treat, he doesn’t have a desire to try again to get it). By not physically punishing his mistakes, he isn’t afraid to try something new. And then to try again. When he finally gets the reward, he thinks back on his actions. “Okay,” he says to himself, “so A, B and C didn’t get me a treat, but D did. I will keep doing D.” Voila, you have yourself a repeated behavior you can put a cue to. It’s simple, but not easy.

Since most traditional trainers (I will define that here as a trainer who uses physical punishment, anything from a touch, to a collar pop, to a kick, to a full on hit) are typically so fond of comparing dogs to wolves, I will use a wolf example here.

In the wild, wolf packs use clicker training (or the behavioral learning theory behind clicker training) every day.  When they are hunting, they are constantly communicating tidbits of information to themselves and the other members of the pack to get them closer to the reward (in this case, the kill). The sound of the “click” or the “mark” (be it a click from a clicker, a verbal word, a whistle, etc.) is just a way of transmitting information to the animal that yes, you have done something that is in the right direction of what I want, now you are going to earn a reward for doing that thing. In the wild, the hooves of the deer hitting rock can be a click, one of the wolves hunting partners rustling nearby can be a click. All are transmissions of information which are being stored away by the brain for later.

If the wolf pack doesn’t make the kill, do they give up? No, they would starve if they did. Instead, they process the clicks (the information) and use bits and pieces to improve the hunt and try something new next time. No two hunts are ever the same, because the pack is constantly learning. And they aren’t learning because the alpha wolf comes over and beats up on them. They are learning by processing information. They are, essentially, learning by clicker training, and the learning process helps them to earn the reward that they both want and need.

Now, how do I know this to be true, you ask? Is it because I went to a fancy college and therefore am better and smarter than anyone else? Nope. It’s because I’ve read dozens of books and essays by people who have devoted their lives to the research and who are smarter than I am. But it’s also because I’ve seen it work with my own two eyes.

You certainly don’t have to have a college or even a high school degree to clicker train. Children as young as five can clicker train. It’s highly encouraged, by me and by many others. As a matter of fact, Karen Pryor, one of the most highly respected clicker trainers, and also one of the first, had no scientific background at all when she began her work (except a few science classes in college). She was, in fact, an English major (like me) and had one dog and one pony when she began formulating what would become her clicker training methods for dolphins. She saw that what she was doing was working and other people saw that it was working and everyone wanted to know why, so more science and research followed.

But you don’t even need to know the science part to make clicker training work (though it is interesting). All you need to know is how to push a button and hand out treats. Pretty simple right? Yeah, I think so too. And most of the time, the simplest answer tends to be the right one.

In honor of some new members of the Omorrow pack who may be looking for some beginning help in clicker training, I present to you, the chapter of my life entitled “Starting Shelby on the Clicker”, soon to be followed by “Starting Shelby on the Sheep”

Shelby came to us after a very tragic time in our lives, as most of you know, but she was just what our little family needed. The excitement of bringing home a new puppy all but crackled and popped in my veins. Every day dripped by, an irritation that couldn’t be consoled.

And then, there she was. I’m sure when I pulled Shelby out of her air crate at the Philadelphia airport she was probably thinking, “Put me back in there and send me home. Who are you? And what is this awful smell?” Then came the car ride, car sickness, a new house, a new brother, a new yard. Everything was new and confusing and probably scary.

So as soon as she and Smokey said hi and got acquainted with one another, I let her nap in my lap, getting accustomed to my smell. When she woke up, she was finally eating some of her kibble, so I got out my clicker, got a handful of her kibble mixed in with tiny pieces of peanut butter training treats and sat on the floor with her. I put the clicker in my pocket so the noise wasn’t too loud for still sensitive puppy ears and clicked once. I immediately popped a piece of kibble in her mouth. The minute she finished chewing, click, kibble. Click, kibble. Then – JACKPOT – click, training treat. Her tail wagged, and she stepped onto my lap and started nosing my pocket where the treats were coming from, then she nosed the pocket where the click was coming from. Click, kibble, what a smart puppy.

Ten clicks and treats was all she got before I put the rest of her kibble and a few small treats in her bowl and let her finish. From that moment, she was hooked.

The next day when I took her out of her kennel and walked her, before I put her bowl on the floor, I took a handful of kibble and clicked. She immediately looked at me, and I popped some food in her mouth. Click, kibble, click kibble. Her tail wagged furiously while Smokey laid in the kitchen and watched, an amused look on his face. I think he must have been thinking, “What a silly puppy, getting so excited over kibble, and a few treats, you don’t even know about them breaking out the big guns yet.”

Meanwhile, while I clicked and treated Shelby I began to say her name. “Shelby” she looked at me, click and treat. “Shelby” looked at me, click and treat. Five click and treats later, she might not have known her name was Shelby, but boy did she know that Shelby was certainly a good thing (whatever it was) and certainly worth coming to.

It took about 12 hours before Shelby started following me everywhere and anywhere I went. I quickly became the source of “all things great and wonderful” in Shelby’s life, and I haven’t ceased to be that since. When I am unavailable, Shelby easily transfers her adoration to Joe, who is the source of “all things great and wonderful when mommy isn’t around”.

Sure we have bad days and we have good days, and we have really great days, just like any puppy owning experience. We have sad days and angry days and happy days. We have play days, lazy days, snow days and rain days. But everyday, no matter what is going on, we have the clicker, and in Shelby’s opinion, that makes every day a good day. In my opinion, it makes every bad day, a better day, and every better day an awesome day.

In the interests of greater harmony…

Like many who dwell outside the rarefied world of horses and horsepeople, I only recently became acquainted with Buck Brannaman’s life and work through the beautiful documentary film Buck that was released last year and is now available on DVD. Buck gave a Q&A at the showing I attended in Portland early in the summer, and made good in person on the charisma so evident on film. It struck me immediately how much his training approach had in common with that of the clicker/marker trainers I most admired, and despite my great ignorance about horses I knew it would be worth my while to attend one of his clinics as a spectator. In late October, I traveled up to Spanaway, Washington with a firm cushion and a warm blanket and planted myself in the bleachers of the arena where Buck taught three separate horsemanship classes every day for four days. (He followed with two more for three days; his dedication and stamina are remarkable.)

I spent most of three days happily lapping up just about everything he had to say and to show about training horses, though I couldn’t help remarking that he was somewhat less effective as a trainer of people. But at the end of his second session on that third day, one of his students asked what he thought of clicker training, and he could not have been more contemptuous or less measured in his response. He said he found it worthless at best, exploitative at worst. Good for nothing more than tricks. He recounted a recent encounter with a dangerously spooked steer and joked that a clicker trainer “couldn’t click fast enough” to handle such a situation.

Well, that got me riled. And when I’m riled I write. A few days after returning home from Buck’s clinic, I sent him an eight-page letter detailing all the reasons I was convinced that a) he was already a “clicker trainer” and b) he could be a better one. I would probably not post it here if I had heard back from him, and I am hesitant to do it now, but I don’t know whether he’s still trashing the people with whom he should be making common cause, and I’d love to jump start the dialogue that might bring us closer to mutual understanding. As I think I make clear in the letter, I admire Buck a great deal, but I think in this instance he’s using his influence to real potential harm. I also realized that this letter represented my own most focused attempt to articulate the power and promise of clicker/marker training. (I regret that my summary of its history contained a couple of significant inaccuracies. I have let them stand here in the interests of fair representation of my own fallibility, but apologies are due to the memory of Keller Breland.) Anyway, here it is:

1. Recognizing and channeling (even liberating) an animal’s inborn gifts, whether they be of intelligence, power, quality of movement, motivation, etc. Recognizing and responding appropriately in the moment to distinctions among species and among individuals.
2. Patience; incrementalism; breaking skills/challenges down into manageable steps; being ready to have something take an hour, a day, a year, five years, a lifetime.
3. The power of repetition.
4. The importance of accuracy, precision, consistency.
5. Setting the animal (human or otherwise) up for success; closing off unproductive options.
6. Offering a good deal; always asking what’s in it for the animal.
7. Efficacy; not asking questions you don’t know the answers to.
8. Discovering how little you need to do.
9. Maintaining calm, focus, and life (or reviving it in a dull or anxious animal).
10. Adapting to circumstance, dealing with what is rather than a fantasy of what ought to be.
11. Using smarts in place of power.
12. Teaching the animal to teach you.
13. Building awareness of your own physical, mental, and emotional states. Building your own capacity for equanimity and self-control as a means of building it in the animal and increasing your ability to communicate clearly.
14. Building trust and respect through competence and informed leadership.
15. Striving to be an enlightened monarch; taking responsibility for the well-being of an animal who has entrusted him/herself to your judgement.
16. Finding a “feel” (what I understand as a live current of connection and communication, whether it passes through a rein or across an open field).
17. Learning from the animal even as you teach him/her.
18. Timing, timing, timing.

Keep a float in your line…

One of the Clicker Expo presentations that I found most interesting and valuable was given by Michele Pouliot on “The Right Touch.” Michele is determined (hooray!) to reclaim the leash as a tool for training and communication rather than simply for management, and she’s demonstrating more generally that there are ways to employ contact artfully, informatively, and positively. As I told her after her talk, I’d been quite literally feeling some of this stuff out for myself over the last six months or so, inspired in the main by Buck Brannaman’s work with horses, by his emphasis on finding a “soft feel” and leaving a “float” in the rein, and by his further emphasis on the importance of developing sensitivity in the horse and the rider so as to make the rein a conduit of information in both directions. I thought there was no reason that a leash couldn’t function similarly, and I’d found through trial and error that it very much could. (Of course, the idea that collar pressure — like bit pressure — can be communicative is hardly a new one, but the messages people have sent by leash have typically been blunt and unpleasant. The idea that light pressure might be converted from an aversive to a conditioned reinforcer is, I think, novel.)

Michele has been much less clumsy in her efforts, and she gave all of us at her talk a simple, clear, and efficient method for flipping our dogs’ conception of pressure (and our own), from oppositional force to welcome invitation.** As she mentioned, there had been some trepidation on the part of the Expo organizers around her presentation of her process, given that it relies on negative reinforcement to get rolling, but I can say with absolute conviction that her method could have saved my dogs a great deal of annoyance if I’d been acquainted with it earlier. And even having muddled my way to a rough approximation of what she’s doing with the leash, I am better able now to refine my techniques intelligently (and to expand them into similar work with hand to body contact). I can more easily move forward thanks not only to the clarity of her approach but also to the intellectual and moral affirmation I took from noting its overlap with my own nascent ideas. Out of respect for her care in presenting the specifics of her method, I’ll wait to describe them here until I’ve had a chance to review her notes, but I think they should be disseminated widely, as I’m convinced that they have the potential to reduce the use of negative reinforcement significantly. As long as we use leashes primarily to contain rather than to communicate, and as long as we labor under the misconception that the signals we send each other across the line must necessarily be aversive, we miss a great opportunity to get in better touch with our dogs.

** It’s probably no coincidence that Michele is a champion “freestyler,” i.e., she dances (beautifully) with her dogs. Anyone who’s done much partnered dancing can readily understand how this mode of training is analogous to “giving good weight,” and can also guess how seamlessly it might integrate with other vital forms of kinesthetic awareness and communication.

Photo by George Grall.

what next?

Strengthening the marker’s power.

Once you’ve established an association for your dog (or other animal) between the sound of your chosen marker and some valued reward, you can begin to use the marker to identify and encourage any and all behavior you like. If you have a totally untrained young pup, you might mark and reward a moment’s quiet in an outburst of barking, then the next moment, and the next, until you find that the moments accumulate into longer spells of sweet silence.* Moments of eye contact are another great place to start with puppies and many full-grown dogs: everything you do in training will be built on a foundation of focused attention, so make it as wide and deep as you can. Don’t worry at first about attaching cues to these behaviors. Saying “quiet” before your dog has arrived at a solid physical understanding of what quiet is will only create needless frustration for you both. And saying “QUIET!” will probably convince him that whatever he’s barking at is even more threatening or exciting than he thought, since you’re suddenly barking too.

If your dog already performs one or more behaviors pretty reliably when you ask for them, you could begin simply by marking correct responses to your cue. What’s correct? For now, whatever it has been in the past. If your dog habitually responds to “sit” by backing up a couple of steps and settling lazily onto one haunch while sticking his other back leg out to the side, you know that’s his definition of the word. Yours might be different, but for the moment you can set aside the task of bringing the two definitions together. Mark and reward every sit that follows your “sit,” no matter how slow, no matter how sloppy. (You may find the sits get quicker and straighter in spite of your absence of effort.)

A few things to remember:

1. Give the cue only once. If your dog fails to respond, wait at least twenty seconds (and until you have his full attention) before giving it again, or “Sit. Sit. Sit!” may become your cue. Treat all words like empty vessels, and fill them deliberately with meaning.**
2. The mark is always followed by a reward. You don’t have to mark every repetition of the behavior (I’ll talk later about effective “schedules” for marking), but when you do mark, you’re making a promise on which you need to deliver.
3. Work on one new behavior at a time. There’s a significant exception to this rule that I’ll talk about later, but this helps avoid confusion for the animal and accelerates learning.
4. Work in short sessions. Very short! Ten to fifteen repetitions between breaks. At the first sign of fatigue or fading interest, stop.
5. End on a high note. If possible, end with the new behavior you’ve been training, but if necessary end with a behavior the dog already knows well. Success breeds success.

What’s most important in the early going (and ever after) is that you and your animal enjoy yourselves. I won’t go into an elaborate defense of positive training methods here, but they follow from the (scientifically sound) premise that the training of voluntary behaviors proceeds most effectively and predictably from a state of eager but contained anticipation (especially in the case of a predatory animal). But even when training’s fun, it’s taxing. Again, the moment you notice your dog’s interest flagging, or your own impatience rising, stop — always, if you can help it, with a fresh success, however small. That way you’ll continually create positive associations (for you and your animal) with training itself.

*On the other hand, I do not recommend that you begin by marking and rewarding a bark, especially if you’re using a more powerful marker like a clicker. One thing to keep in mind is that the first few behaviors you effectively marker train will become the animal’s default behaviors in future training. Quietly attentive behaviors (like eye contact or sit) are your best choices at the start.

**The trick with words (and other cues and markers) as vessels of meaning is that they might already be topped up. Old meanings can be difficult to dislodge, especially if they’re loaded with pain or fear. Thus it’s a very good idea (though sometimes difficult in practice) to avoid saying your pet’s name in anger. If you want a truly empty word, try something rare, silly, or foreign. I lived in Bologna more than twenty years ago, and pretty much the only time I get to knock the rust off my Italian these days is when I’m cueing Pazzo with “fusilli!” (left spin) or “bombolone!” (right spin).

Sounds like…

…steak!!

Making the marker meaningful.

The principles and methods I’m describing here work across species; they’ve been used effectively in the training of countless animals, from rabbits to rhinoceroses, from grizzlies to gerenuks. (I highly recommend that all skeptics check out this brief article by Karen Pryor and the embedded video of a marker-trained rhino.) Before her death last year, our lovely calico Hops had learned through marker training to target my hand with her nose and to give me a head butt on the cue “Zidane” (which will only make sense if you follow European football). Most of my experience, however, has been with dogs, and for ease of reference I’ll focus my discussion on them.

As I noted in the previous post, it’s important that the stimulus you choose as a marker should initially possess little or no meaning for the animal you want to train. This will give you full freedom to endow it with the meaning you want: “Well done! Good things coming!” Here’s yet another reason that words can be problematic as markers — unless you’re training a young puppy and you can commit in a disciplined way to reserving your marker word(s) exclusively for training, there’s a high likelihood that their meanings will become muddied with unintended associations.

I’m strongly sympathetic to the visceral distaste that many people feel for clickers and other mechanical soundmaking doo-hickeys. They’re cold and fussy and seem to require a third hand that we haven’t got. Still more annoying, they interpose a barrier of artifice between trainer and trainee. However, for consistency, precision, and repeatability, they’re really hard to beat. And paradoxical as it may seem, the little gap they introduce in our “natural” communication with other animals actually improves our mutual understanding immeasurably. No, I take that back — the improvement can be measured, has been measured, and it’s big.

So I recommend a clicker despite the possibility that it may not be totally neutral for you or your dog. Contrary to popular belief, you won’t need to use it forever: once you’ve trained a specific behavior and put it reliably on cue, word markers will usually suffice to maintain the training. But you’ll get to that maintenance stage much more quickly with a clicker, and once you’re there I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll notice a significant uptick in your dog’s enthusiasm and attention anytime you pick that silly gadget back up. Likewise your cat’s — Hops would immediately start purring whenever I started a new training session.

Of course, that wasn’t her first response to the clicker. She was mostly indifferent to it, maybe a little affronted. The sound it makes is short, sharp, and attention grabbing, qualities that make it effective for training but also make it rude in other contexts. So you’ll want to introduce it carefully, from a distance, or muffled in a pocket. (It’s best to avoid pointing the clicker like a t.v. remote at your dog’s face.) Gauge your dog’s response. Curiosity and/or indifference are a fine place to start, but if you see him/her shrink back, you’ll need to take things more slowly.

If you decide to use another marker, just do what you can to keep it precise and consistent. A single syllable like “yes” generally works better to this end than a longer word.

Your first and most important task is to persuade your dog that, from this moment on, the following equation holds absolutely true:

“click” (or “yes”) = wonderfulness

In order to establish that equation, you need to know what your dog already considers wonderful. Ideally you can identify among the many things your dog loves some thing(s) that are easily doled out in small bits. Food is the obvious candidate for a predatory species, and the one I rely on most heavily (probably too heavily, made complacent by my dogs’ eager appetites). For early training, when the strength of a good impression takes precedence over perfect nutrition, I like (because my dogs like) hot dogs and smoked mozzarella, which are relatively inexpensive, have great intensity of flavor, and are easily divvied into tiny (1/4″ by 1/4″) cubes. Red Barn and Natural Balance also make meaty but dry food rolls that are as mouthwatering (to most dogs) as they are nourishing; they’re my treat of choice when I work with dogs at the Oregon Humane Society. But it’s good and sometimes necessary to think beyond food rewards; depending on the animal and the situation, they may be impractical and/or unrewarding. I’ve been working with Pazzo recently on his ability to keep the leash loose when we walk through our local squirrel-infested park (where he may be totally indifferent to food that isn’t on the move). When he pulls the leash taut, I simply stop. The moment he gives me slack, I click and move with him in the direction of the squirrel. To Pazzo’s delight, the squirrels will often double-down on my reward by staying put, and we’ve thus become a great slow-motion stalking team. Likewise, agility trainers will often reward their dogs with quick games of tug, and trainers of impassioned herders carefully control their access to sheep.

But for clarity’s sake I’ll assume that you’ve got a clicker, a hungry dog, and a stash of small, tasty food treats. Here’s what you need to do:

1. Click.
2. Treat.
3. Repeat.

That’s it. There are only a couple of competing provisos: try not to move your “treat hand” until after you’ve clicked, but deliver the treat as quickly as possible (within a second of the click). Finding a rhythm that keeps those two events close but distinct will make the click most meaningful to your dog and help unlock his/her exclusive focus on the treats.

Worth a thousand words?

On the definition and choice of a marker.

Even (or especially) among experienced animal trainers and savvy pet owners, I often encounter a strong prejudice against “clicker training.” The phrase itself is a turnoff to many, which is one reason I’ve come to prefer the more or less interchangeable terms “marker training” or “bridge training.” These latter phrases describe the approach more accurately and inclusively — people naturally get confused when you tell them that “clicker training” doesn’t necessarily involve a clicker. Another reason I favor the second two terms is that they have so far escaped strong commercial association and appropriation.**

“Marker training” is the most literal and straightforward of the three, so it’s the one I’ll use from now on. My aim here and in future “basics” posts is to lay out the foundational principles, reasoning, and tools of this approach so that you’ll be free to adapt them to your own needs and ends. I’ll also try to anticipate some of the challenges you might encounter when starting out, and to offer possible solutions. But one of the foremost advantages of marker training is its flexibility: once you have a good command of the core ideas, you and the animal you’re training have infinite creative license in putting them to use!

Marker training falls under the larger umbrella of positive training methods; indeed, it’s something we all practice whenever we say “good dog!” But a solid understanding of how and why it works can help us practice it much more deliberately and effectively.

As with the “good dog!” example, a marker is simply a stimulus chosen by the trainer to signal two things and establish a vital connection between them:

1. I like that behavior.
2. You will be rewarded.

An effective marker satisfies a few important criteria:

1. It is specific.
2. It is easily reproduced by the trainer.
3. It is easily perceived by the trainee.
4. It is initially neutral, meaning that it has little or no intrinsic meaning to the trainee.

I don’t know of any successful use of taste markers, given that few tastes are truly neutral to any animal; smells can be tricky for the same reason but are sometimes used as markers, most obviously and often in tracking work. Sight markers are tops in neutrality, but not always easily reproduced or perceived. Like touch markers, they may be most useful with animals who have lost use of one or more of their senses, or in situations where sound markers are impractical or forbidden. For most trainers and trainees, in most situations, sound markers tend to be most adaptable and workable. That said, they require more care in their choice and use than you might expect.

Why is that? Part of the problem ironically arises from our great facility in producing varied and complex sounds, our gift of the gab. The general human reliance on words to convey meaning makes many of us sloppy with tone (unless we speak a tonal language), volume, enunciation, inflection, and emphasis. In other words, we take the least care with precisely those variables that other animals are most likely to find intelligible. We toss flurries of meaningless syllables their way like so many snowballs — and instead of congratulating them for catching a few on the fly, we berate them for being stubborn and slow. Our carelessness in expression is mirrored by our bluntness in perception. Few of us can reliably hear the difference between one “good dog!” and another (less enthusiastic, slower in tempo, higher in pitch, etc.) but a dog can. “Sit, Stormy. Sit! Get down, Stormy! No, Stormy! Sit!” may be roughly translated as: “My poor owner is working herself unnecessarily into a lather.” The more loquacious we are, the more faith we place in language, the less likely it is that our pets will understand us.

So choosing and using sound markers effectively requires that we get humble; we need to begin from a recognition of our limitations. Most of us just don’t possess the emotional and vocal control we need to produce sounds that are highly specific, consistent, and intrinsically neutral. Which is not to say that words cannot work as markers, only that their ease of use masks (and even contributes to) their inefficacy relative to other, more precise sound markers. Like clickers, yes, but also like whistles, chimes, and bells. Training by whoopee cushion, anyone?

**I am an ardent fan of Karen Pryor (trainer and educator extraordinaire, founder and CEO of Karen Pryor Clickertraining), forever grateful to her for her insight, her dedication to reality over “common knowledge” (e.g. dominance theory), and her tireless advocacy of positive training methods. The six months I spent under the instruction of Helix Fairweather with the Karen Pryor Academy for Animal Training and Behavior were tremendously illuminating and rewarding. I am proud to be certified by KPA as a trainer, and I plan to attend ClickerExpo here in Portland at the end of the month. I do, however, think there’s a downside to Karen’s mostly laudable efforts to establish common professional standards and gather like-minded trainers into one big tent, particularly when there are fees collected at many of the tent’s entrances. I had a mostly friendly tussle with KPCT’s president, Aaron Clayton, when I graduated from KPA and learned that my promised year of free access to the alumni message boards was contingent upon my entering a marketing agreement that would require me to display the KPA logo on my website and anywhere else I advertised my services as a trainer. In this instance and a few others, I found that independence of thought and self-presentation ran somewhat at odds with the commercial imperatives of KPCT (as they would with those of most for-profit ventures).