Yes – the clicker is useful because we humans are inconsistent. The clicker clearly marks the moment the dog “gets it right” better than a brief and often mis-timed alteration in the constant flow of expressions, voice, tone, posture, and gestures that the dog is reading from us.
Sailboat
I agree with your post. To nitpick, Don’t Shoot the Dog is by Karen Pryor. She has a training institute that certifies trainers, and it’s very good. Check to see if there are any in your area. It’s worth poking around the videos and articles on KP’s website as well, for ideas and theory.
Operant conditioning works on any organism with a brainstem, from starfish to humans. The trick is finding what’s reinforcing for the individual you are training (i.e., not always food) and being consistent.
Oops! Thank you for correcting me! Pat Miller wrote The Power of Positive Dog Training, which is also a great book and more of a step-by-step training program than Don’t Shoot the Dog or The Other End of the Leash.
So, about that “only positive reinforcement” thing that seems to be the modern touchy-feely fashion - I mean, I’m not a dog, but isn’t that kind of confusing to a dog? Personally I know I’d like to be told what I’m doing wrong so I don’t do it anymore, not just what I’m doing right. Is that not an issue?
I read the Monks of New Skete book, and while I liked a lot of it, some of those corrections seemed really, really extreme.
If your dog is oriented to please you, then the p-method is excellent. Our new pup is more independent and rough and tumble. I’ve noticed that a (very) light cuff or bop on the nose (two finger tap) gets her attention far better than repeated verbal commands. So I am using a combo of p-method, light physical correction, and cookies to get her on track. So far it seems to be working fairly well. She isn’t hand shy, and I never correct her physically in anger, she responds every time reliably.
Re: PetSmart classes: Observe them first! I saw them using choke chains and punishment-based methods at the local PetSmart so they are not all the same.
Positive methods have worked really well for me, but the problem I’ve had is that I’m the only one who’s worked with her, so she only really consistently obeys me. For instance, she would never dream of jumping on me when I walk in the door, begging me for food, or licking my face, but she still does that stuff occasionally to guests and, to a much lesser extent, my wife. It’s hard to tell people to ignore her when she’s behaving badly-- err, it’s easy to tell them, but hard to get them to listen :).
My vet recommended Good Owners, Great Dogs by Roger Killommon (or something).
For actually training, we prefer the “make it up as you go along” method, but that, unfortunately, often has some erratic results.
Brian Kilcommons and Sarah Wilson
There you go. She (vet) wrote it on the back of a card, and has handwriting like she studied to be a medical doc… or an engineer, so I’m lucky I got the title right.
It’s more about the trainer than the trainee, IMHO. If a method clicks with you, makes sense and is something you’d be comfortable doing, then that’s the method to go with.
It makes no sense to do anything based on pack structure if you’re not sure what actions constitute aggressive or submissive behavior. Likewise, if clicker makes sense to you and seems like a way you’d like to communicate with your dog, go for it. If not, don’t start.
I’d cation anyone against doing the submissive roll, throwing a dog on its back thing to a dog they don’t know inside and out. It’s a great way to be bitten
I once took a dog through a training class, and here’s what I got: It’s the owner/trainer, not the book.
I had just signed up my dog when a lady and her completely irresponsible pup came in. The pup was jumping around and being awesomely disobedient and the lady was ineffectively yelling Sit! Sit! and yanking the dog’s leash.
The guy behind the desk, who’d just signed me up for a course, looked at the dog. That was it–just looked at it. Suddenly the dog sat. Suddenly the dog behaved perfectly. He sat. He looked up at his owner for just a second, and then focused back on the trainer.
I said, “Ah, he’s been here before.” The dog trainer and the lady both shook their heads. The lady looked absolutely stunned.
The dog trainer said, “He read my mind. They do that.”
This dog trainer did not abuse the dogs in any way and he did not accept bad behavior. As far as I can tell, he was right. The dogs read his mind. He had much the same effect on my dog (who, I’ll note, was already some ways ahead of the dog owned by the lady). If I hadn’t already signed up I would have after that. But obviously the point is not to have a dog who obeys the trainer, the point is to have a dog who obeys you.
With clicker training, you use a No Reward Marker to tell the dog what he’s doing wrong. It’s a word or noise (I use a sharp “eh eh!”) that tells the dog that he lost the opportunity to “earn a click”. Since a treat always follows the click, the No Reward Maker communicates to the dog “what you just did isn’t what I asked for, you lost your reward”.
As an example: if I tell my dog to sit and stay and he does, he gets a click and a treat. If he starts to get up, I tell him “eh eh!” he gets no click, and we start over. After a few repetitions, he understands what the command means and complies because complying means good things for him.
It’s actually less confusing to the dog because it pinpoints the correct behavior. Think of this way: if you bop your dog on the nose for jumping on you, how does he know what the bop is for? Jumping on you? Approaching you? Being near the door? Being in the hallway? The radio being on? The cat being in the room? Barking? There are too many variables for him to sort out exactly what he’s being punished for.* If you train him go to his bed when someone comes in the door, there can be a thousand variables but the one constant will be that he gets rewarded for sitting calmly on his bed, so that’s what he’ll do. Dogs do what works for them.
You could continue to bop him on the nose every time he jumps and eventually he’ll figure out that the constant in that situation is the jumping, but it’s much quicker and less stressful for everyone to teach him an incompatible behavior (can’t jump on your guests if he’s lying on his bed!) instead of making him narrow down the variables.
*Dogs notice everything.
Oh also, positive reinforcement training is actually the opposite of touchy-feely. It works on the knowledge that your dog is an animal, not some sort of psuedo-child that operates the same way people do. Touchy-feely would be letting the dog do whatever he wants because I loooove him. Positive reinforcement training makes you the leader of your pack, but a fair leader that knows how to communicate. It teaches you to “speak dog”.
I think people assume it’s touchy-feely because it does require you to make an effort to understand why your dog does what he does. But it’s much more effective to “speak dog” than to try to force your dog to learn english, even if that feels like you’re the one doing the work. Guess what? You are. Why would the dog care about learning to Stay or Lay Down if there’s nothing in it for him?
What you saw was a guy playing off a coincidence. I assure you that dogs cannot read minds.
Well, when he was the class trainer, all the dogs behaved much better. Seemed like more than a coincidence to me.
Dogs can read body language pretty well. Even very subtle body language.
My mom took her Yorkie puppy to a rather expensive, but well worth it, individual training class at PetCo. I took the pup to one of the classes. It was all positive reinforcement and clickers. Frankly, this guy was just excellent and dealt well with an easily distracted little dog. But, like others have said, I think it’s more about the individual trainer than the name of the store. Also, it seems that a lot of the trainers job is to train the owner on how to be a good owner, rather than to teach the dog a lot (though little Penny learned a ton).
For my terrier mix that I got out of the pound in December, we have a trainer coming to the apartment on Wednesday. At 25 bucks an hour for individual in-house training, I think it’s a bargain. I do great with teaching the dog how to do things; what I’m bad with is teaching him how to NOT do things. That’s why I’m getting the trainer.
For what it’s worth, even though she’s a TV personality, I really liked Victoria Stillwell’s book, It’s Me or the Dog.
If rates in PA are similar to Michigan, that’s a steal. The trainer that I’m working under charges $50 an hour and that’s quite low for this area.
I’ve only skimmed it, but I do, too. It’s Me or the Dog has a permanent spot on my DVR 
25 is a CRAZY steal. When I had a trainer coming to work with Haplo it was 75, but if we’d kept it up it would have gone down over time. Of course, this was the only trainer in town willing to work with him.
I went back and read the email just to make sure I didn’t misread it and it was really $125. Nope, I was right…$25. The only stipulations that she asked for was that we sign up for 4 sessions. Even if she’s not that good, 4 sessions for $100 seems good to me. (oh and in case anyone’s worried that she’s a dog beater at that price, she uses clicker training…which is something that I’m going to have to get used to, since I’m just used to food reward).
But enough about me…back to your regularly scheduled thread. Sorry if I derailed it.
Continuing Hijack// how does that compare to other prices in your area? Just curious. I’d be interested to know how you like the training, if you don’t mind sharing. /CH
ZSofia, what was Haplo’s issue?