In her new book, ($25, Scribner), Karen Pryor offers a lively, wide-ranging overview of the use of operant conditioning for training, well, nearly any animal you can think of. Ms. Pryor is easily the best-recognized of clicker trainers, having popularized the term and practice over the last 30 years or so, starting with her hugely popular book Don鈥檛 Shoot the Dog. She uses her experience as a trainer of an enormous variety of animals鈥攆rom hermit crabs to dolphins to people鈥攖o explain the technology of operant conditioning in an entertaining, insightful way. The book interweaves personal history, observation, and science to provide the reader with a profound understanding of how clicker training works, and how it allows communication between humans and other species in ways that other training methods cannot.

Reaching the Animal Mind.

As most experienced clicker trainers have noticed, clicker training has some unusual properties. Training times are often dramatically reduced by the clicker; animals sometimes learn a new behavior after a single click. Generalization of trained behaviors is faster, and the clicker is excellent for addressing fear-related problems. And animals (and people) seem to find being trained with the clicker very motivating鈥攎uch more fun than with reward-based training alone. Pryor went in search of explanations for these effects, interviewing neuroscientists and others in an effort to understand 鈥渉ow鈥� clicker training works. This section of the book provides some tantalizing preliminary information on this topic, and I hope it will spark additional investigations in future.

Personally, I found the second to last chapter the most interesting, as it describes the application of clicker training to people. A recent development, 鈥淭AG鈥� teaching (Teaching With Acoustical Guidance) is being used for everything from working with autistic children to improving golf swings to increasing efficiency on commercial fishing ships. We are animals, too, and the same principles of learning apply. With the addition of language to speed the process, TAG teaching provides a fun, efficient method to train people at many tasks.鈥� The gift that clicker training offers us, as Pryor eloquently describes, is the opportunity to enter into a mutually rewarding training relationship with animals, including people. When we remove force, pain, and domination from the learning process and substitute patience, respect, and communication, we open the door to true partnership. For anyone interested in training others, human or animal, this transition is crucial, and Reaching the Animal Mind provides an outstanding introduction to the philosophy and technology needed to get there.

This article originally appeared on 国产吃瓜黑料 K9, the former dog blog of 国产吃瓜黑料 magazine, on June 15, 2009.

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In operant conditioning, you often hear about positive reinforcement: the dog earns some reward for performing a desired behavior. But there are three other ways to influence behavior that fall under the same training theory. The four ways, broken down simply are:

1. Give your dog something good鈥攁 treat for a sit.

2. Take away something good鈥攁 timeout for bad behavior.

3. Give your dog something bad鈥攖he shock of an e-collar.

4. Take away something bad鈥攔eleasing the pressure on a choke collar for a sit.

In general, we try to keep our training to the first two items both because they鈥檙e more effective and because they produce fewer unwanted side effects like bolting and loss of the dog鈥檚 confidence in the handler. But certain dogs just won鈥檛 avoid temptation by positive reinforcement alone.

Enter punishment. Specifically, we鈥檙e going to talk about positive punishment鈥攖he sort that鈥檚 generally associated with rolled up newspapers, e-collars, and the like. When it comes to greeting other dogs, Danger has a long history of lunging out to say hi, which he evidently finds enjoyable. Further, his owner Grayson鈥檚 yanking on his lead isn鈥檛 changing his behavior. He just ignores the nagging. So we鈥檝e got to find some way to get him to stop. In Danger鈥檚 case, we discovered that his aversion to water could be an advantage. I had Grayson and Danger walk across the room past another dog. When Danger pulled out to greet, Grayson gave him a quick squirt of water in the face and that ended that.

But positive punishment (the proverbial stick) is dangerous territory for both dog and handler. The punishment has to be severe enough to actually stop the behavior and not so much as to actually injure the dog physically or mentally. Steve White, a well-known police dog clicker trainer, has come up with eight rules for punishing your dog. They underscore just how hard it is to get punishment to work properly without undue fallout. The best reason to avoid punishment is that it tends to be reinforcing to the punisher鈥攖he owner feels some satisfaction in getting even with the dog, and turns to punishment more and more often to change behavior. Not good.

THE EIGHT RULES
1. The punishment must be something the animal dislikes and something the animal does not expect.

2. The punishment must suppress the unwanted behavior, otherwise it鈥檚 just plain abuse.

3. The punishment must be of the perfect intensity. Too much and the dog will shut down. Too little and the dog develops resistance to punishment.

4. The punishment must happen immediately after the behavior.

5. The punishment must be associated with the behavior, not you. Otherwise your presence is a signal that punishment may occur, and your absence is one that it will not. The result? A sneaky dog.

6. The punishment must happen every time the behavior occurs. Otherwise, you may put the undesirable behavior on a variable schedule and make it even tougher to break.

7. There must be an alternative for the dog. Give him an opportunity to perform an acceptable behavior in order to escape or avoid the punishment.

8. Punishment must never be used to the extent that punishment outweighs reinforcement from the dog鈥檚 perspective.

If you can鈥檛 follow all eight of these rules, you鈥檙e probably better off avoiding the use of punishment. Even if you can follow all eight rules, it鈥檚 always better to try positive reinforcement before resorting to punishment.

This article originally appeared on 国产吃瓜黑料 K9, the former dog blog of 国产吃瓜黑料 magazine, on May 12, 2009.

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Possessiveness is an entirely natural behavior for dogs and, in the case of dog-dog interactions, a difficult one to modify. From Brutus鈥檚 perspective, his behavior works鈥攁nd every time he successfully steals a toy or defends one from another dog, his obnoxious behavior is rewarded. I know of no way to decrease his interest in toys鈥擨 expect that time outs will have the opposite effect鈥攁nd I don鈥檛 want to deprive him of what are obviously a great source of joy in his life. But here are some thoughts on improving his etiquette around other dogs:

1. I suspect you鈥檝e figured this out by now, but don鈥檛 give your dog toys when he鈥檚 around other dogs.

2. Train your dog to drop toys (or anything else that鈥檚 in his mouth) on cue. When your dog has a toy, offer him another, better toy or treat.聽 As he opens his mouth to take the new thing, say 鈥渄rop鈥澛� and praise him enthusiastically when he does. If he likes to retrieve, you can throw the toy for him as a reward. This is going to take a lot of training with every toy he has before it becomes automatic. Make your dog think that whenever you say 鈥渄rop,鈥� an even cooler toy or fabulous treat will appear. You will get lots of use out of this command, and you can use it when Brutus steals another dog鈥檚 toy.

3. Train your dog to have solid leave it and come (recall) commands, and use them to prevent stealing other dogs鈥� toys. This is especially important if your dog is inclined to get ugly with other dogs. As your letter indicates, you recognize that he lacks self-control around toys, so it鈥檚 your responsibility to provide that control. Just like you wouldn鈥檛 let a son (or daughter) bully other kids at the local playground, you can鈥檛 let your pup bully other dogs at the park for their toys.

This article originally appeared on 国产吃瓜黑料 K9, the former dog blog of 国产吃瓜黑料 magazine, on May 18, 2009.

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