Clickertraining: The Four Secrets of Becoming a Supertrainer

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2 Clickertraining: The Four Secrets of Becoming a Supertrainer Authors Morten Egtvedt & Cecilie Koeste Original title Klikkertrening for din hund (published in Norway, 2001) Translation Emelie Johnsson-Vehg Publisher Canis Clickertraining Academy Vestre Rosten 78 NO-7075 Tiller NORWAY canis@canis.no Web: ISBN: Copyright All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or distributed in any form without the written permission of the publisher.

3 Table of contents Acknowledgments. 5 Preface.. 6 For the dog owner. 8 For the dog (owners are not allowed to read this!). 10 Chapter 1: What is clicker training?.. 12 Chapter 2: Positive and negative reinforcement. 21 Chapter 3: The 4 secrets of becoming a supertrainer Chapter 4: Find an effective reinforcer! Chapter 5: Conditioned reinforcers Chapter 6: Training techniques. 73 Chapter 7: Target training Chapter 8: Stimulus control Chapter 9: Backchaining Chapter 10: The retrieve. 116 Chapter 11: Generalization. 123 Chapter 12: Crossover dogs (and horses) Chapter 13: Five common syndromes

4 Chapter 14: Actual training Charging the conditioned reinforcer Eye contact (look at me) Targeting Following you Loose-leash walking The recall The sit The down The stand OK! Offering you to put the collar on Handling Polite greetings (for the eager dog) Polite greetings (for the warier dog) Waiting alone Crate training Puppy biting Getting used to different environments Holding an object (retrieving) The retrieve Switching the lights off (and on) Shutting drawers Riding in a wheelbarrow Go to family member (The Postman Game) Go to mat when there s someone at the door Getting the newspaper out of the mailbox Doing the laundry The spin Choosing the right tool Getting a soda from the fridge Chapter 15: A few last words 207 References. 210 Recommended reading Want to learn even more?

5 Acknowledgments Thank you to B.F. Skinner, for giving the world the theory of operant conditioning. Karen Pryor, for introducing us (and the rest of the world) to clicker training, and for still inspiring us to move forward. Bob Bailey, for sharing your wealth of training experience with the animal training community. Kathy Sdao for very useful comments on the English translation of this book, and for being such an excellent trainer and good friend. Rico, Ceca, Kiro, Tia, Ergo and Kira (our dogs), for being so patient with us while we struggle to improve our training skills.

6 Preface In the middle of the 90s, an almost explosive growth in the interest of clicker training took place in the US. At this time there were very few dog owners in Norway, were we live, that had ever heard of clicker training and we wanted to do something about that. This book was first written in 2001 and has since been updated a number of times. Up till now the book has sold in over copies in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, and is largely responsible for the fact that clicker training has become very well spread in the Nordic countries. We are very pleased to finally be able to present the English translation of the book. This is the first time that we have published a book as an e-book to be downloaded from the internet, but we believe there are many advantages with this method of publishing. First of all, everyone who wants the book can have access to it in five minutes whether they live in the US, Australia or Japan. It will also be a lot easier for us to update the text as we learn something new. On top of this, we will have the opportunity to put hyperlinks directly into the text so that we can point to useful information on the internet. There is no doubt that this is the future of the publishing world. This book is first and foremost written for all the pet-dog owners who wish to have a dog that behaves well in their day to day life. Our hope is that the book will also be a useful resource for instructors that teach classes for other dog owners. We have chosen exercises that we think most dogs need to be able to perform in their everyday life as well as some examples of obedience exercises. We have done our very best to not make the theory part more lengthy than necessary and we have put great effort into making the descriptions of the exercises as specific as possible. Experience tells us that this makes things easier to understand and that the threshold for trying things out in real life becomes lower. To just read this book is like buying the sheet without playing the music. It is not until you try things out for real that you will really understand what we are writing about. As soon as you feel that you are comfortable with the training, we recommend that you look at the descriptions of exercises in this book the way a jazz musician looks at a theme as something to improvise on. You do not have to do stuff precisely the way that we describe in this book, the most important thing is that you understand the principles and, as time passes, learn how to use them in order to come up with your own solutions to challenges that you and your dog come up against.

7 A lot of people claim that clicker training is an art. Well, some people claim that football is an art too. But football as well as music and clicker training is first and foremost a question of mechanical skills. This means that you do not need to have any congenital talents to learn how to train dogs well. But you do need to practice! The more you practice training your dog, the better your mechanical skills will become. As you gradually become more skilled, you will notice that your dog learns faster too. What is so fantastic about dogs is that they most of the time are unusually patient with us as we struggle to try to learn how to train them. This book is in no way meant to cover everything that you need to know about dogs and dog training. There are, in other words, a lot more you need to know about dogs than how they can be clicker trained. However, we do hope that this book will provide a good introduction into clicker training and that it makes you want to learn more about these training principles. We hope that you will experience as many fantastic training moments with your dog as we have with our dogs. Morten Egtvedt Cecilie Køste

8 For the dog owner This is a book about clicker training. Clicker training is a very effective, not to mention fun, training method. Experienced clicker trainers say that you can teach your dog everything it s physically and mentally able to learn with clicker training. Whether you want a nice and well-mannered pet, a hunting dog or a dog that can perform perfectly in obedience, field trials or in agility, you will benefit greatly from learning about clicker training in theory and practice. If you want to train your cat, horse, ferret, budgie, your children or your spouse, the same principles of training apply to them as well! Clicker training is not magic, even if some people like to present it like that. You can compare the principles of clicker training with a race car. It has the potential to go at lightening speed, but it can also go off road if you don t learn how to use the steering wheel, or how to step on the gas and the brakes correctly. If you ve purchased this book looking for a quick fix to solve problems you have with your dog, we have to disappoint you. We can t deliver miracles just pass on the principles of effective dog training. You have to be prepared to devote time and energy into understanding the theory, and then persevere and practice often in order to develop the practical skills needed to train a dog effectively. But a consolation is that the training isn t going to feel like a chore. When you ve begun clicker training, you re not going to be able to quit. You ll get addicted and you re going to like it! A great deal of the content of this book will be different from what you previously have learned about dogs and dog training, and that may seem a bit confusing at first. Since you have purchased this book we know that you re interested in learning more and that you have an open and curious mind. A lot of people might have told you that clicker training is something dodgy, that clicker training is difficult or perhaps that clicker training is stupid. And you still bought the book! In short we re not worried. We know that you will read this with a critical mind and form your own opinion. Luckily, clicker training is both logical and easy to understand. When you start observing the behavior of dogs and people around you (a common side effect of clicker training!) you will notice how the principles of learning function in everyday life, on all living organisms you encounter (including yourself and your dog). Previously, you might have been more concerned with correcting your dog when it s done something you don t want it to do. From

9 now on you will begin to notice all the little and big positive things that your dog does, and reinforce these. You will be surprised by how much more effective that is. It might feel odd in the beginning, but you will soon get the hang of it. A lot of people who have taken up clicker training claim that they have developed a better relationship not only to their dog, but to their friends, colleagues and not least their own family when they have brought this thinking with them into everyday life. But, we will focus on the dog for now. In the beginning it might seem difficult to control the clicker, treats and the dog at the same time. After all, you have only two hands. But you will notice that this will come more and more naturally to you. You re now beginning to develop the mechanical skills that every good dog trainer needs. If you re enthusiastic and train diligently, you can become very good at clicker traning in a short period of time, and you will notice that it becomes easier and easier to teach the dog new things. You will both learn to learn and then training will go really fast. So as soon as the most important basic skills are in place (with both you and your dog), new things will be trained in record time! If you have a dog that you previously have trained a lot with traditional methods, you probably will experience that things seem to go a bit slow in the beginning. Your dog might not be used to taking the initiative and try on its own and it needs some time to regroup. On the other hand, if you have a puppy or a young dog, everything might go really fast. A piece of good advice is to take it easy, bring out the clicker and something the dog really loves and have fun together. You will see results. Don t feel upset about the mistakes you make in the beginning (it is a necessary part of training). Instead, feel good about everything you do in the right way, and feel happy about the joy in working that your dog displays.

10 For the dog (owners are not allowed to read this!) It s possible that your owner will act really strange the next couple of days. She might be sitting on the couch reading (this book), and suddenly get up looking enthusiastic and get treats and a clicker and just do lots of things that you won t understand at first. Be patient with your owner in the beginning! Every dog knows that owners are not fully trained in one day. You need to work with purpose and patience, and you ll see your owner becoming more and more skilled. The good news is that if you play your cards right, the days of leash poppings, scoldings for things you don t understand and other unpleasant things are over once and for all. You might get the owner you ve always dreamed of! And what are we dreaming of? Well, here s the thing: Our owners have a lot of things that we would like. They have treats, toys and other nice things. They decide when we get to go out, run free, play with other dogs and pee on lamp posts. They can even decide when we can get attention or cuddles. But those days are about to end! Clicker training is in town, and this is our chance to finally take control of the things we want. Clicker training an owner really is rather simple. It s all about making the owners click, because every time they do that we get something that we want. There are many ways to get an owner to click. Which strategy is most successful varies from owner to owner, and sometimes you might even have to do a lot of different things to get the same owner to click. A common method to get the owner to click is to walk nicely at their side and not pull on the leash (yes, we do realize that may feel odd, but try it!). When one does that, most owners tend to click and treat in intervals. Sometimes the situation calls for more drastic methods, and you might need to roll over, play dead, lie down or fetch things they throw. Just try and see what makes your owner do what you want (click and treat). Sooner or later they will obey! Luckily, the owner won t be upset if you don t manage to make them click straight away, just keep trying until you find a method that works. Don t forget that owners can be very sneaky. In the beginning, all you need to do might be walk nicely two or three steps on leash before they obey (click and treat). It s not unlikely that you sooner or later may have to walk nicely two- or three hundred meters before they click. Just be patient and keep working. If you want to

11 get your owner to let you run free, we recommend you use the sitdown-and-look-at-the-owner- command. Most owners will do what you just asked them to. Some of you might find that you can t manage to train your owner as well as you d like. You must understand that not all humans are suited to this kind of training. At least you tried, and we want you to know that you re not to blame because it didn t work. And don t forget you can always achieve what you want with traditional methods (pull on the leash to get to what you want, bark like a maniac so you won t be left alone and steal stuff of the table). That works too! At the end of the day it s very simple to be a dog. We do what works for us right now no matter what that is!

12 Chapter 1 What is clicker training? You might have overheard people talking about clicker training lately. And maybe you re thinking oh, well - another new and revolutionary method that is supposed to be the solution to every dog owner s problems. Actually it s neither. The history of clicker training One can t actually claim that clicker training is a new invention. The method rests upon scientific learning principles which have been known since the 1930s. However, it s not until the last ten years that it has become known in dog training circles, perhaps mostly thanks to dolphin trainer, biologist and author Karen Pryor. She is the author of several books on the practical use of operant conditioning, or clicker training. During the early nineties she travelled around the US, giving a number of seminars for dog owners, and this was the beginning of a small revolution. And she is still doing a great job promoting clicker training through her books, the website and the famous ClickerExpo conferences. The fast growing popularity of clicker training was also connected to the ever growing Internet. Through web pages and mailing-lists, dog owners all over the world could read articles by Karen Pryor, Bob Bailey and other clicker pioneers. Dog owners in the US could discuss problems with other clicker trainers in Sweden and Australia on a daily basis, something that was completely unimaginable just a few years earlier. Ok, and this amazing method is supposed to be the answer to every imaginable problem a dog owner might have? No, unfortunately not. The result is, just as with any other dog training method, dependant on your commitment and practical skills. If you place your grandmother behind the wheel of a race car, the car is not necessarily going to go at top speed. But it s over-simplifying matters to just blame the car for this So, clicker training is as mentioned neither new nor revolutionary, and it s no miracle cure either. Why should I then bother to finish reading this book? The answer is simply that clicker training has

13 been shown to be a very effective and interesting training method, well worth getting to know and understand. It is up to you if you want to embrace 100% clicker training, or just learn the method and add it to your repertoire together with other methods. The only thing you risk when reading this book is learning something new! Today clicker training is used in a number of areas. The method works just as well for teaching pets loose-leash walking and coming when called, as advanced obedience or tricks. Clicker training is used in tracking, search and rescue and agility. Even trainers of hunting dogs are starting to show an interest in the method. New fields of applications are discovered along with new dog owners learning the method. What is clicker training? But exactly what is clicker training? Well, in the days when it was only Karen Pryor who was talking about clicker training, that was a question that could be answered fairly easily. After the fact that more and more dog owners have started to apply the method, it couldn t be avoided that the method begun to split up in different ways. Some have continued to work according to Karen s way, while others have picked parts of clicker training and added these to their old methods. Nowadays when a dog owner claims to be a clicker trainer that doesn t necessarily say much about the way this person really trains. Because of this, we ll start out with clarifying how we choose to define clicker training. There are four core elements that define clicker training. 1. Focus shall be kept on rewarding the correct behavior. 2. The dog shall offer the behavior voluntarily 3. The systematic use of a conditioned reinforcer (only this one is not a sentence) 4. We focus on what we can see We will now explain each aspect in more detail. 1. Focus shall be kept on rewarding the correct behavior When clicker training, we aren t so concerned with correcting the dog for the wrong behavior or for stuff we don t want the dog to do. Instead we focus on reinforcing behavior that we want. When a behavior is reinforced, the dog will repeat this behavior more often. If you re diligent with reinforcing behavior you like, the dog will

14 soon be doing these things very often. It sounds simple and it really is! But what about unwanted behaviors? You can t stop the dog from being up to mischief simply by reinforcing, can you? That sounds so weird! In reality, it is not only possible it s at least twice as effective! Focus on what you want your dog to be doing instead of what you don t want it to be doing. Instead of punishing the dog for barking, you can reinforce being quiet. When you reinforce being quiet, the periods without barking will become longer and longer. And that means the periods of barking will become shorter and shorter. You see? You just need to change your perspective. For every unwanted behavior that your dog has learnt, we re sure you can come up with at least one behavior you would like it to display instead. Is the dog pulling on the leash? Reinforce walking on a loose leash. Is your dog busy looking at other dogs all the time? Reinforce looking at you! Does the dog jump up on people when it wants to say hello? Only lavish it with attention when it keeps four feet on the ground! When you ve figured out what it is you want your dog to do, all you need to do is reinforce that behavior enough. You ll soon see the change in your dog. When you start thinking like this, we guarantee that a whole new perspective will open up and not just on dog training. It is worthwhile to think about which methods you employ when you want your children, spouse or colleagues do what you want. Imagine what this kind of mindset could do for the Middle East But even if we do think that it is more effective to reinforce the things the dog does right, that does not mean that a clicker trainer never utters a no to her or his dog, or in other ways has boundaries for the dog when it is up to mischief. When your dog is doing something wrong, like for example runs off or is on its way to counter-surf, naturally you shouldn t just hang around and withhold the click until it gets off the counter again! Just stop it right away! This really has nothing to do with training this is handling of an acute situation or fire fighting if you will. Once the fire s out you can revert right back to thinking about how you re going to teach the dog what you would like it to do instead of running off or counter-surfing. This way you don t have to keep fire-fighting for the rest of your dog s life You have to keep training and fire-fighting separate and see to it that you devote a lot more time to training than to fire-fighting! In planned training situations, it is more effective to reinforce the

15 things the dog does right. With positive reinforcement the training will go a lot faster, you ll have a dog that enjoys working and you ll not have to deal with all the negative side effects that come with scolding, leash-popping and other aversive methods. 2. The dog shall offer the behavior voluntarily This second core element of clicker training is from our point of view the most important one, and it s this aspect that makes clicker training so much fun and so effective. Imagine you re going to teach your dog to sit down. If you ve read other kinds of dog training books you might have read that you should move a treat above the dog s head and lure it into sitting down, and perhaps even put pressure on the dog s rear end. In clicker training, we go about things a whole lot smarter. Or rather we ll do nothing. We ll just be ready, clicker in hand and treats in our pocket waiting patiently. When the dog voluntarily sits down, you click and treat. The next time, the dog will sit down sooner. You want the dog to come when called? Click and treat every time the dog comes to you without being called. Soon the dog will be coming up to you a whole lot more often than before. Your dog already knows how to sit, lie down, stand, run, walk nicely, carry things in its mouth, bark, keep still and a whole list of other things. We re certain it does all of these many times a day! If you want to train your dog to do any of the above, start by reinforcing when the dog does a behavior on its own accord - just catch it. When you reinforce a behavior, the dog is likely to repeat the behavior more often. And when you re certain that the dog will do the behavior, you can add a signal for that behavior (we ll discuss more about adding signals to behaviors later in this book). In the beginning, it often takes a little time before the dog starts to offer behaviors spontaneously. But when it comes to realize that you often click and treat when it offers behaviors, it will become more and more skilled in trying things by itself. The dog will so to speak become better at the game Hot or Cold?. Do you want me to sit? Lie down? Not that either? Spin around? Yes! Training dogs like this is amazing fun. This is zest for life in practice! Simple? Yes! Effective? No doubt about it!

16 3. The systematic use of a conditioned reinforcer Finally enter the clicker! A conditioned reinforcer is something that signals that the real reward is on its way (for example a treat, a ball or something else the dog likes). The clicker is a small plastic box which emits a sharp click sound. When the dog has learned that the sound means that a treat is on its way, the clicker conveys very clear information to the dog. With the clicker you can reinforce very exactly, just as the dog takes a few steps on a loose leash, just as the dog looks at you instead of at the other dog across the street, just as both elbows reach the ground as the dog lies down. In other words, you can tell the dog exactly which behavior you re after. Experienced trainers know how instrumental timing is for the final result. With improved timing you can cut the time it takes to train something new by many percent. If you click just as the dog does what you want it to, it usually doesn t matter that it takes a few seconds for the primary reinforcer (the treat, the ball etc) to reach the dog. The behavior that the dog was doing as it heard the click will still be reinforced. Think of the clicker as a camera! When you click, you take a photo of what it is you want your dog to do. And then the reinforcement follows. However, a conditioned reinforcer can be many other things than a clicker. We ll get back to that later on. 4. We focus on what we can see Have you ever wondered what s going on in your dog s head? What the scoundrel s thinking when he doesn t come when you call him? Rest assured, you re not the only one who has wondered. A great many dog owners analyze themselves silly trying to understand their dogs. The problem is that it is not possible for us to know what our dogs are thinking. Trying to figure out what is going on in the dog s mind will at best lead you to qualified guesses and interpretations (which indeed might be interesting to discuss with other dog people over coffee). As clicker trainers, we ve made everything a whole lot easier for us. We simply don t care about what s going on in the dog s mind, or other stuff that we can t see (at least not while we re training). Concentrating on what you can see with your own eyes will take you a lot further. And there are a great many things we can see when we train our dogs:

17 Situation: We can see what s happening around us when we re training Behavior: We can see the behavior the dog executes. Consequence: We can see what happens after the behavior, for example the dog got a treat (when it sat down) or the dog reached the lamp post (when it pulled on the leash). Timing: We can see how exact we can be with delivering the reinforcement. What was the dog doing when it heard the click? Criteria: We can see what behaviors are reinforced and what behaviors are not. Rate of reinforcement: We can see how much time passes between every reinforcer. Quality of reinforcement: We can see how intense the dog is when it receives the reward. All of the above are things that we can see. And it will give you more information than all the attempts at mind-reading in the world. We can t change what the dog thinks (or at least we haven t figured out how to do that yet). But we can change our training. And when we change our training, we have to change the stuff we can see and that we actually control. Since we focus on what we can see, the advice you ll get from a clicker trainer will be very specific. Here are some common training tips that you ll never get from us: You ve got to improve your leadership. It is important that the dog trusts you. The dog must regard you as its leader. You ve got to improve the working relationship with your dog. You ve got to work more as a team. We re sure these are well-meaning bits of advice, but what in the world do they mean? This kind of abstract advice is to be found in many books about dog training. How in the world is a dog owner going to understand how he or she should train a dog after having received that kind of abstract advice? Instead we often give advice like: You were half a second late with your click. Do your best to be more precise the next time. Don t call or nag your dog when it s busy watching the other dogs. Withhold your click until it looks at you voluntarily instead!

18 Put some distance between you and the other dogs at first. Move closer when your dog can look at you even if there are other dogs around. You re letting a bit too much time pass between each click. You don t want any more than 5 seconds between each click at this stage in your training. Those treats look a bit dry. Try these juicy meatballs instead! We really hope that you can see the difference because this makes a lot of difference! So if you want to be real clicker savvy, we advise you to forget all those abstract ways of putting things, and focus on what you can see instead. Be as specific as you can when advising others and expect specific advice from instructors, books and others that come with advice. It might not sound as fancy as dog whispering, but it works! What clicker training is not A lot of people buy a clicker and begin to use it in training. However, there is a huge difference between using a clicker and using the method that is clicker training. A lot of people have begun to use the clicker as a means to reward more exactly (or precisely), and that s nice of course. But they continue to base a lot of their training on correcting their dog when it does something wrong. They help, model and lure the dog to get it to understand what to do (instead of waiting for the dog to offer the behavior voluntarily). In short, they train much as they ve always trained. This is NOT clicker training. It not even close to clicker training, it doesn t matter how much they click. This is traditional training with the use of a clicker. It might be more effective than regular training without the clicker, but they lose out on so many of the real benefits of clicker training. To complicate things a bit further, you don t even need a clicker to clicker train. A conditioned reinforcer can be anything a clicker, a whistle, praise, a smacking sound, a hand signal, you name it. Anything the dog can perceive can be used as a conditioned reinforcer. Don t get hung up on the clicker. It s used because in many cases it s the most fitting choice. If you find a better behavior marker, please give us a call straight away! Remember that it is the principles of clicker training (the four core elements) that are important not the small plastic box.

19 The benefits of clicker training So, why should you use clicker training? Here are a selection of reasons: You will mainly work with reinforcing wanted behaviors instead of correcting wrong ones. That creates a dog that is happy to work and that enjoys the training and not a dog afraid of doing something wrong. Instead of luring and commanding the dog, you will teach it to offer behaviors voluntarily. That means a smaller risk for your dog to become dependant on your luring. Since the dog is taught to voluntarily offer behavior from the beginning, you will get a dog that participates in the training of its own free will. One doesn t have to worry about a bad working relationship with a thoroughly trained clicker dog! A clicker trained behavior seems easier to generalize into new environments and situations. In other words, if the dog has learned a behavior in a certain situation, it s easy to train it to execute the same behavior in other situations. With the aid of a clicker you can reinforce very precisely the timing of the reinforcer improves. That makes training more efficient, you save time and you re able to achieve the precision you want. When clicker training, we teach the dog what to do first. We add a cue when the dog executes the behavior perfectly. Since we teach the behavior first and then add the cue, we get more reliable cues. Clicker training becomes amazing fun after a few months of training. After a while, you ll get what we refer to as a clicker wise dog. A clicker wise dog knows the rules of the game, it loves to work, it offers behaviors left, right and center and it is very creative. New behaviors are trained in no time. We hope that you get to experience what it s like to train such a dog. It s a true high! As a clicker trainer, you ll get better at observing behavior and reading your dog, splitting your training into small parts

20 and increasing the criteria in small steps appropriate to the dog s ability. And it s so much fun when you get started! You ll get in a good mood with this kind of training. Well, you say so. But you still haven t said anything about how it s done practically. We ll get there, we promise. But before we can get started with the real training, there are some bits and pieces we ve got to run through. We need to get more familiar with what s under the hood of this race car before we turn the ignition on. Want to read the rest of this book? Order your copy now (with four great bonus videos!) at