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.