The Centre for Applied Canine Behaviour
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Clicker Training in Japan, with Carolyn Clark new

Training Tips (a series of short articles)

Ian Dunbar Seminar - Fighting & Biting

There is a revolution going on in the dog training world. A real shift is taking place.

Traditional training was adversarial. The dog had to be controlled at all costs. Bad behaviour had to be corrected. In fact, the whole focus of training was on watching for mistakes and punishing for them.

Things improved slightly for dogs when folks were introduced to 'Praise' after every correction.

Then, 'motivational' methods were developed, some advocating the use of toys and even food (Oh no! The "f" word!), usually after correction. Once dogs 'knew' what to do, they needed to be 'proofed' (read: set up to make mistakes so that they could be corrected).

Thank goodness for some folks with common sense and an open mind.

Enter, the new breed

Dr. Ian Dunbar, an English veterinarian living in the U.S., was one of the first to promote lure and reward training. "Lure your dog to do what you want so that you can reward him".

The late Milo Pearsall and Dr. Dunbar also laid to rest the myth that you can't train dogs until they are six months old. Adolescence is the hardest time to start training a dog! (Mind you, with the harsh physical methods of an earlier day, a puppy would not be strong enough to withstand training.)

Thank goodness some trainers got smart and, with an open mind, started watching people who trained other species, in particular the sea mammal trainers. The Baileys and Karen Pryor and others have been training free swimming dolphins for decades. Cats, birds and dolphins had been trained without restraints for various military purposes in the 40's and 50's, work only now being declassified. A friend of mine has worked with dolphins that accompany the research boat five miles offshore to locate mines on the ocean floor. The dolphins swim over and under schools of mackerel to do their work. They often swim by schools of live mackerel for the reinforcement and the reward of the a dead mackerel. At the end of the day, the dolphins jump into a research boat for the ride back to the research station. (Yes, you read correctly! They are tired at the end of the day and night is falling.) And we think we have recall problems with our dogs!

What is different?

A lot! No longer are we seeing an adversary, or behaviour as needing to be punished, We are watching to catch the desired behaviour or, in the case of shaping, the tiny little steps on the way to the finished behaviour.

Dogs are encouraged to try out behaviours so that they can discover which one gets the reward. Communication is through a sound or a signal that the animal has learned to value. A word 'yes' or a mechanical sound 'click', or, for a deaf dog, a flash from a small flashlight means, "That, what you are doing at the moment of the sound, is good enough for the reward!" This 'reward mark' (conditioned reinforcer in scientific language) is an incredibly powerful communication tool in our training toolbox.

The challenges of noticing and 'catching' behaviours that can be rewarded can be a lot of fun. This training game, where the being - dog, dolphin or human - operates on his or her surroundings to make good things happen has so many rewards for trainers and trainee. Training becomes a cooperative venture. Dogs do what works!

It's contagious

Catch your students doing something you like and let them know. Catch your teacher ... your partner ... your parent ... your co-worker ... your child. We can change the world!

Carolyn Clark, December 1997

Kids are wonderful trainers ...

Kids are wonderful trainers ...........
Deklan with Rosie

Want a challenge? — Train a chicken!

by Carolyn Clark

Carolyn with "Fang"

Train a what?

"You're going where? When? To do what?"

Friends and family were at once incredulous and moved to tears of laughter as I said again that I was going to learn to train chickens in Hot Springs, Arkansas, for two weeks in July.

Many dog trainers are taking the opportunity to expand their understanding of Operant Conditioning and develop their training skills at workshops run by Bob and Marian Bailey. Together, Bob and Marian have over 100 years of experience training over 150 species, from cockroaches to killer whales. As some of you may know, Marian was one of B.F. Skinner's first graduate students. Bob was in charge of the U.S. Navy's Dolphin Training Program. Bob later joined Marian and her first husband, Keller Breland, in their successful business, Animal Behavior Enterprises. Bob and Marian came out of retirement a couple of years ago to share their knowledge and experience. Chickens are the beings of choice for practising the skills of training (They are easy to keep, have a fairly limited behavioural repertoire, and are incredibly fast! And you can't put a choke collar on a chicken!)

Bob stressed over and over that operant training is a mechanical skill.

First skill: Delivering the reinforcer

To develop our skill and muscle memory, the first training session was spent delivering the feed cup as fast as we could, as often as we could, to a target spot over the table. Working with a partner, we alternated 30-second training sessions for a period of five minutes. Speed was the goal. Cups were empty. Chickens remained in their cages.

The second training period emphasized fast, smooth delivery. This time the cups were half full of feed. Again, we alternated training sessions of 30 seconds. There was time out for table clearing as feed scattered, or shaking out our shirts as feed flew into faces and down fronts, creating much laughter. The third training period added clicking before the fast, smooth delivery. (The feed dispensers were one-cup measuring cups with a clicker glued to the handle.) Still, the chickens were caged.

Second skill: Know your animal — Chicken Wrangling 101

Finally, we were introduced to our chickens. We were each assigned two birds: one an experienced, clicker-wise bird that had been in the program for three years and a second, fresh from the barnyard, a naive and slightly-wild bird. We spent the next training sessions getting the feel of the birds, so to speak. Working with the naive birds, we first had to just get our hands on the bird in the cage and wait until we felt the muscles relax, release the bird and close the door. Count to five and repeat. We advanced to lifting the bird out of the cage, relax, return. Then we had to carry the bird to the table, hold it over the table, relax and return it to the cage. We were next allowed to lower the bird to the table, wait to feel her relax and return her to her cage. Finally, we allowed the bird to peck at the food in the cup, observing its particular style of pecking.

Our experienced birds were clicker-wise and, for the most part, ready to work. They knew the game. And some came with a lot of 'baggage'. My bird, #820, became known as 'Fang'. She was so anxious to work that when anyone was in the training room, she was climbing on her cage door and water dish. She was a chicken with 'drive'. She pecked hard at anything that moved in front of her, mainly my arms, hands and bosom... Bob said to reach in quickly and confidently. Bam! — she got my arm. I decided to take off my jewelry and my watch. Bam! — she got my arm anyway. Tuck her under your arm, said Bob. Bam! — she got the other arm. I really don't think it was anything personal, as she was a whiz at pecking the right colour on the colour discrimination task and she was very quick to catch on to the colour discrimination stimulus reversal. She pecked the plastic bowling pins off the table in a single blow. When pulling the rubber band (how far could the bird stretch it?) she backed up with such a vengeance that she backed right off the table, twice! The first time, she grabbed the edge of the table with her beak and hauled herself up. The second time, she missed the edge, landed on the floor, and flew back up onto the table before I had time to react. What a bird!

She was nicknamed the 'schutzhund chicken' and, that first week, I wore a long-sleeved shirt in the training room. I was interested to see my own reluctance to take my turn to train. I kept thinking of dog owners with dogs that had bitten them or shown aggression. This was like taking a dog from the shelter with an unknown history.

Skill three: Timing

Chickens are fast. A click that is slightly early and the bird will peck above the target. Click late and the bird may grab the target instead of pecking. It was very helpful to work with a partner or 'coach' who could say 'late' or 'early' or 'Good!'. We needed reinforcement, too.

Rate of reinforcement

Especially in the learning stage, a high rate of reinforcement is essential. Bob and Marian emphasized the value of continuous
reinforcement, noting that the environment itself provides lots of variation. In their experience — and it is vast — variable schedules of reinforcement, twofers and threefers, etc., are rarely necessary. (As an experiment, when I got home, I decided to teach my English Cocker, Penny, to discriminate the blue coloured ring from the toy stacking rings. I fed her whole kibble ration, over 100 pieces, on a continuous schedule of retrieve blue ring, click, treat, and she was just as eager to continue at the end as she was at the beginning.)

Planning the period

Planning each training period and each session in the training period is important. A training period might last 10 minutes, for example.

Each training period will have a number of training sessions. Each session could consist of a number of trials, also called responses. For example, in a session of 10 trials, we would count the number of correct responses. When you achieve 80 per cent accuracy (i.e., 8 correct out of ten), raise the criteria.

A training session may be a timed 30 seconds. The number of responses in each session can be counted. When training our naive birds to eat from the cup, we counted responses (pecks) in 30 seconds. We could see if the number of pecks increased, stayed the same, or decreased. If the number of pecks continued to decrease, either the bird was full, frightened, or ill.

My bird averaged 23 pecks per 30 seconds. But as we moved into the second week, she suddenly dropped to three or four pecks! And then went into a heavy moult. It's hard to train when that happens. (However, she did learn to follow a target stick and discriminate a red triangle from a blue and yellow one. She also pulled a little red wagon for two inches.)

Switch your partners ...

At the start of the second week, we were given the opportunity to change birds. I was tempted at first. (People held Fang back with a brush when getting her egg out of the cage. There is still a mark on my arm from Fang.) But then I decided that I would see if I could modify Fang's behaviour. I observed that she most often pecked to her right and the hardest pecks, those that included a twist and shake, were always to the right. Then a light-bulb went on. What did Gary Priest, curator of behaviour at the San Diego Zoo, say was the first thing they trained bears et al to do? Touch a target. I said, "Good bird," as I opened Fang's cage, offering the food cup to her left. If she pecked me I removed the cup and shut the door. (Rather quickly the first couple of times!) I slowly began placing the cup on the floor further from the door so that she stepped out and got a bite of food as I put my hands on her. Then, I picked her up before giving her a bit of food... I did not wear my 'schutzhund sleeve' at all the second week and, by the third day, I could carry her under my arm and stroke her without being pecked. What a lesson in dealing with aggression!

Show-and-tell

The second week, we were assigned a project for show-and-tell on the last day. We had a series of behaviours to train and then put together in a chain. My project was to put Fang under the apex of a small A-frame set up on a table. She was to come out from under the A-frame, turn right, knock two plastic bowling pins off the table, the yellow one first, then the blue, do an about turn, walk up the A-frame and down the other side, turn left and knock a 1 in. diameter wooden dowel off the table. She would get a click and food at the end only, and had 60 seconds to complete the chain.

We were to write out a training protocol or plan and then describe for the group how we would train each part and how we would put it all together. We had four days.

The first skill involved here was deciding what each actual behaviour was, and then train each by breaking the behaviour into many small responses. We were to develop each behaviour to 80 per cent accuracy.

I learned not to shape behaviours within the chain. Get the separate behaviours solid first. Then, put the chain together. I used back chaining for most of the responses but, for the colour discrimination, I used forward chaining - as she had to see two pegs and hit yellow, the blue peg was then easy. Later, the absence of pegs would be the cue to walk up the ramp.

Some details I learned: Especially when training new responses, deliver the primary reinforcer, i.e., feed, as close to the location of the response as possible.

If the responses drop off, or if behaviour deteriorates, stop the session. Put the animal away and think. Get input from your
observer/coach. Re-evaluate. Modify if necessary. Don't back up.

Ration reinforcers

You have a limited number of reinforcements each day. You can't feed a full bird. Jackpots may be useful at the end of the chain. Jackpots are determined by the time it takes to eat them, i.e., a large piece of hotdog isn't any more valuable to a dog than a small piece, but a handful dropped on the floor matters.

Get in lots of reinforcements in a short period of time.

Timing, timing, timing

While training Fang to knock the dowel off of the table, at first I was late with the click and trained a raking motion rather than a peck. She even picked the dowel up a couple of times. By clicking a fraction sooner, we sorted that out and she consistently sent the dowel flying.

You get what you reinforce.

Train with a partner, at least some of the time. Become a better dog trainer. Train a chicken.