Clicker Training

I presented a seminar on how to teach your dog self control for Your Dog's Friend last Saturday. It was a good crowd, especially considering we had the first summer-like weekend of the year.

Almost everyone there had a dog who could use at least a little bit more self control. Everyone asked excellent questions and were very receptive to teaching their dog the easy way, with positive reinforcement.

I did, however, get a couple questions that went kind of like this: "Yeah ok, I understand that positive reinforcement is good to teach my dog how to do something, but how do I get him to obey me?"

I wasn't quite sure what the person was asking, so I asked for clarification. This was the answer: "You know, how do I get the dog to obey me no matter what? Sometimes he only obeys when he wants to."

My answer startled the person. That is not a dog problem, that's a person problem. It's up to you, the person, to teach the dog how to do what you ask no matter what the distance, no matter what the distraction, no matter what the duration. And it's really easy to teach when you use positive reinforcement. Ridiculously easy.

As you may well imagine, the person wasn't particularly thrilled with my answer. She couldn't understand that her dog, who'd been taught to come when called, hadn't been taught to do it in distracting circumstances. She believed the dog was being willful, spiteful, stubborn, mischeivous (insert your adjective of choice here). She didn't see that the real problem was the teacher. She hadn't taught the dog that he actually could come when called, even if a deer ran across it's path.

Here's the example I gave her, hoping it would help explain that the dog wasn't being stubborn or willful, but simply hadn't been taught how to come when called:

I have been driving a car since I was 15. I can drive a stick shift, automatic, truck, sports car, convertible; I can even tow a boat. I know where the turn signals, emergency brake, and light switches are on all those different kinds of vehicles. I can drive them fast, I can drive them slow, I can drive them in the rain and in the snow. (No, I didn't really mean to sound like Dr. Seuss, it just came out that way.)

HOWEVER, ask me to drive you into or out of the District of Columbia at 4:00p on a Friday afternoon and you'll see a woman who's driving skills will quickly deteriorate. Not because I'm stubborn. Not because I'm being willful. Not because I'm mad at you. Simply because I don't drive in the city. I don't think I've ever driven Downtown. In all my 40 years of living, I've never experienced a traffic circle with 5 lanes. I've never had to dodge taxi doors opening. I've never had to look at twelve signs within 20 feet of one another.

Teaching your dog to work with you through distractions is no different. You've got to teach them how to do the much more difficult job of complying even in the face of things they may not see very often. It's really easy to blame the dog. But it's just not fair. Do your job of thoroughly preparing your dog to work even in daunting circumstances, and he'll do his job just fine and dandy.

Every year, I head to a terrific conference called ClickerExpo that's targeted at clicker trainers. It's fantastic every year, and this year is no different. At this morning's sessions, I went to a session called Working for the Joy of It: A Systematic Look at Non-Food Reinforcers by Ken Ramirez (Shedd Aquarium Training Director). It was a great talk with lots of valuable information for how to use things other than food to train your dog. Here are a couple really good ideas I got from Ken:

1. Don't assume you know your dog's preferences. In other words, your dog gets to choose what's reinforcing to him, not you. Which is hard for some people to accept. They'll say "He's a Lab, he should love to swim" even though it's clear their dog doesn't like getting wet. Or they'll say, "my dog has to work for praise because I don't want to train with food." Uh-uh: your dog chooses what he likes, not you.
2. Never take reinforcers for granted. Just because a piece of chicken works well right now, it doesn't mean it will work well all the time. What if your dog just finished dinner? That chicken's not as appealing if your dog is full.
3. Avoid reinforcement pitfalls:
   1. don't take reinforcers for granted (see #2 above).
   2. constantly evaluate the effectiveness of the reinforcers
   3. vary the reinforcers – don't always give a piece of kibble when your dog sits. Sometimes give him a piece of chicken, sometimes give him access to a favorite toy, sometimes run and let him chase you.
   4. control your dog's access to reinforcers. How valuable is $5 if you always have a $20 in your pocket? 
   5. Look at the behavior and let it tell you if the reinforcer is working: are you getting more behavior or less behavior as a result of the reinforcer?

When I get home, I'm going to systematically evaluate the reinforcers I use for my dogs. I'll bet I'll make some changes based on what I learned from Ken today.

Dogs need more than just training. They need exercise, time to be a dog, interaction with you, interaction with other dogs.

A recent client had a 8-month old Labrador who was causing a little bit of trouble in the home. Nothing major – stealing toys from the kids and playing keep-away, finding boxes outside and shredding them, carrying wood from the woodpile — all attempts to get some interaction and exercise.

I asked how much exercise the dog got and the owner enthusiastically said "He gets at least two walks a day!" For an 8-month old dog bred to work hard all day, two walks a day wasn't going to come close to giving this dog the exercise he needed.

I suggested a few things to help meet this dog's needs:

1. No more food out of a bowl. This dog needs a job. Getting his breakfast and dinner out of a food toy would be one way to put him to work. There are a lot of food toys on the market these days for dogs. One of my favorites is called a Squirrel Dude and it's made by Premier. 
2. Hire someone to run this dog hard every day. OR, take the dog to doggy daycare at least 2 times a week. (Although three times might even be better.)
3. Manage the situation until the training takes place. The dog loved to rip up boxes delivered to the house. (It gave him something to do, it made good sense to the dog!). I asked the owners to check the front porch for packages before they let the dog out. This simple step would eliminate one problem quickly and easily.
4. Teach the dog what you'd like him to do. This is very different than teaching a dog what NOT to do. It's really hard to teach a dog (or anyone, for that matter) what NOT to do. But simple to teach them what TO DO. So I asked the owners to focus on what they wanted the dog to START doing.

I created a chart to help them see if their dog was getting enough attention, training, exercise, and stimulation. The chart had three main headings: (1) Training, (2) Exercise, and (3) Enrichment. I asked them to record how many times per day they trained the dog, how hard the exercise was and how long it lasted, and finally how often per day they were feeding their dog out of the Busy Buddy.

Armed with the chart, they are now able to see how good of a job they are doing to help their dog succeed. This is a smart dog. He picked up concepts really quickly. I had him coming when called (with distractions, even!), running to his "settle mat" in no time, and he really was quite the Einstein when it came to learning.

The dog has done his part: he's learned what to do. Now it's up to the owners to do their part: give this dog a job to do and a way to entertain himself.