Oh Behave!

January is almost over but for me, a couple of exciting things are about to start. First, I’m about to begin teaching a second round of Teaching Love and Compassion (TLC), a wonderful humane education program offered by the East Bay SPCA. My class will be made up of fourteen seventh grade students from a public school in Oakland, and seven East Bay SPCA shelter dogs. I’m very much looking forward to getting to know this group of young people, and teaching them how to clicker train their assigned shelter dogs. The last TLC class amazed me with their appetites for training and in our six weeks together, the kids taught the dogs far more than I ever thought they would or could. As I’ve written in an earlier post, the dogs helped the kids learn about compassion, kindness, empathy, and non-violence towards all living creatures.

The second thing that’s about to start is Clicker Expo in Portland, Oregon. Yes, it’s an entire conference devoted to clicker training!

I love training dogs and I especially love clicker training. My introduction to clicker training was – yikes! – twelve years ago when I adopted my kitten Ted from the City shelter. He had terribly aggressive behavior and bit me frequently and hard enough to draw blood, which earned him the nickname, ”Ted the Terror.” On the advice of some shelter cat behaviorists, I tried a number of “traditional” remedies – shaking a can of pennies at him, yelling and stamping, and squirting him in the face with a water gun. I didn’t know a thing about training or behavior back then, but none of those methods worked. In fact, it soon became clear that his aggression was escalating.

I began researching cat behavior and came across a book called The Cat Who Cried For Help, by Dr. Nicholas Dodman, a veterinary behaviorist who teaches at Tufts University’s vet school. One of the chapters described a cat who sounded much like Ted. I emailed Dr. Dodman and learned about Tufts’ remote behavioral consultation service called PetFax. The Tufts team recommended clicker training Ted, learning his body language, and starting a “say please” program with him, in which he had to train for food, play, attention and affection.

Ted

I knew zilch about clicker training, but I looked it up on the web, learned about Karen Pryor – a pioneer of clicker training – and ordered a clicker and a book on training cats to do show tricks. Despite the many naysayers who warned me that a cat couldn’t be trained, I began to clicker train Ted every day. A quick student, he learned to sit, come when called, wave, rise on his hind legs, and a few other tricks. He loved training! He’d start purring as soon as he saw the clicker. (He still does that!)

Shortly after we started training, an amazing thing happened. Ted’s aggressive outbursts began to wane both in frequency and intensity — a result of the training, the “say please” program, and my growing understanding of his body language. I was much happier with him and he seemed happier and calmer in general.

Ted, my first training success story, is still my best feline friend. He continues to be a very interesting guy who definitely has his grumpy moments – and don’t we all? – but aggressive outbursts are very rare. Now that I’ve studied animal learning theory and applied behavioral analysis, and accumulated a great deal of training experience, it makes perfect sense that Ted’s aggression escalated when I was punishing him. The same thing happens with dogs when trained with punishment, pain and force.

I have Ted to thank for starting me on the road to becoming a professional dog trainer and a devout fan of clicker training. It’s in large part due to him that I became fascinated with and passionate about how animals learn and how to train them using positive reinforcement.

With that, I’m off to Clicker Expo! I’ll be soaking up as much knowledge as I can, and return, eager to share it with clients and with you.

Several times a week, I drive from San Francisco to Oakland to teach dog training in an exciting pilot program called Teaching Love and Compassion (TLC). My human students are fourteen Grade 8 students, and their students are seven shelter dogs from the East Bay SPCA in Oakland. The first of its kind in Northern California, TLC is a humane education program designed to teach kids love and compassion through a combination of classroom material and hands-on positive reinforcement dog training. The idea is that the children learn and practice empathy, compassion, non-violence, love and respect through their relationships with the dogs.

The drive is usually a nerve-wracking slog over the Bay Bridge and through rush hour traffic, and I’m often frazzled by the time I get there. But at the end of each training class I’m in another mood entirely. I hardly notice the drive or traffic on the way home. I can’t stop thinking about the successes of the day, the smiles on the children’s faces, and the kids’ terrific patience and kindness towards their dogs.

Sometimes it’s not clear who’s teaching whom. We’re now halfway through the program and already, these kids have impressed and reminded me of valuable lessons for dog training. . . and life.

Peluchin sits for his TLC Trainer

Some of the TLC dogs had a hard time adjusting to the change in routine, and relaxing around all the new people and dogs in class. I explained to the kids that helping dogs feel comfortable, while perhaps not as “sexy” as teaching one to roll over, is part of dog training too. Inside, I worried endlessly that certain dogs wouldn’t relax enough to train, and that the kids they were assigned to would walk away from the program feeling like failures, and/or that positive training was bunk.

I switched to yummier treats, put down comfy mats, set up visual barriers, and asked the kids to work on easy exercises. Happily, one week into the program all the dogs grew comfortable enough to train. My training interventions aside, the kids deserve enormous credit. Unlike many adults, none of my TLC students got upset with the dogs. No one called his/her dog stupid, stubborn or a dud. No one wanted to quit. The kids worked patiently with their dogs, talking to them softly, and gamely trying all my suggestions. These kids who are brand new to dog training have already moved leaps and bounds beyond many adult-dog guardians.

The kids notice and delight in the smallest signs of progress in their dogs; they aren’t stingy with rewards; and they’re infinitely patient with their dogs. We’ve talked a lot about how important it is to have patience when training dogs. But like so many things in life, it’s one thing to discuss patience and another thing to practice it.

Patience is a necessary virtue when it comes to dog training whether you’re teaching a dog to come when called, working to help a dog overcome a fear, or trying to quiet the bark fest that ensues when the doorbell rings. Depending on the dog’s training history (or lack thereof); history of reinforcement for a “problem” behavior; and how easy or hard it is to motivate the dog, carrying a training plan through from start to finish sometimes takes a L-O-N-G time. How long is always difficult to say. That depends a great deal on the patience, diligence and consistency of the human trainers.

Impatience arises in large part from unrealistic expectations about dogs and the learning process. People expect dogs to nail new skills immediately and to execute those skills perfectly under any and all circumstances. Unlike many adults, the TLC kids are still immersed in learning new things. I’d bet that’s why they understand and appreciate that mastering a new skill takes lots of time and practice, and approach dog training with that in mind. If you’ve ever taken salsa dancing lessons, learned to speak another language, or to play a musical instrument, you know what I mean.You don’t learn all at once, you learn in stages – how to do easy steps, then increasingly harder ones, how to put them together into whole dance routines, and how to perform them fluidly and gracefully.

We should approach dog training the same way – patiently and in small manageable steps. First train the dog to do a behavior reliably in environments with few to no distractions before asking (and expecting) the dog to do the behavior in increasingly challenging contexts. If your dog comes when called from anywhere inside the house, that’s a wonderful thing. She’ll still need lots and lots of practice and incremental training to come when you call her outside where other dogs, pigeons and squirrels are cavorting.

It’s often necessary to break a behavior into pieces that the dog can master before putting the whole behavior together. Training a dog to lie down is one example. If you can’t lure the dog all the way into a down position, break it into baby steps. Reward the dog for putting his nose on the floor. When he’s getting that right at least 80% of the time, reward him for putting his nose on the floor and bending the front elbows, then for moving his chest closer the floor, and so on, until he’s lying all the way down.

Training in this manner sets dogs up for success at every step of the way, boosts their confidence, and avoids frustration – for dogs and their humans. If you’re getting frustrated with training, do what my students do. Take a break and have some doggy play or cuddle time. Go back to training later when you’re both refreshed and re-energized. You’ll both have a lot more fun that way, and after all, dog training should be loads of fun.

We could all learn a thing or two from my TLC students. I’ll share more in upcoming posts.