Let’s say you have a killer whale in your backyard. You would need a big tank for sure. Actually, you would probably need more than one. After all, how are you going to clean the tank with a killer whale in it? Ok, so you have your two big tanks and your pet killer whale and it’s time to clean one of his tanks. How are you going to get a 9 ton sea mammal out of one tank and into another? If this sounds like a ridiculous problem, it’s not. Zoos and marine animal parks deal with problems like this every day.
In the case of the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, there are several habitats or tanks for marine mammals and they are joined so that animals can swim from one tank into another. How do you get a whale to go from one tank into another when you want it to? Simple. You use positive training to teach the whale to move. Ken Ramirez, director of training and animal husbandry for the Shedd Aquarium, has helped to develop training protocols for literally dozens of different animals. Much of that training involves simple behaviours that make the day to day care and management of the animals easier for the humans and much less stressful for the animals.
If you can’t throw a fish, learn to train
The roots of reinforcement training based on behavioural science were in science labs at universities. But marine mammal trainers quickly saw the value in positve training techniques and began adopting them as early as the 1960’s. Offering a dolphin or whale a fish for offered behaviours provided an easy, stress free, and fun way to teach large marine mammals to do the things the trainers wanted. But a simple problem cropped up. If there is more than one animal in the tank, how to you provide the reinforcement without creating a competition for the fish?
Well, one solution would be to get really good at throwing fish accurately so that you can reinforce just the right dolphin for the behaviour he just gave you. But there was an easier way. Why not let the dolphin come to you? Trainers again took a technique from university behaviour labs and began using a whistle to mark a correct behaviour. The whistle served two purposes, it both marked the exact behaviour the trainer was looking for and also signalled the animal to come to the side of the pool to receive their reward.
This mark and reward technique was so successful that many professional animal trainers began using it to train not just sea mammals but many other species like horses and bears. Animal Behaviour Enterprises (ABE), founded by Kellar and Marian Breland, trained more than 15,000 animals and 140 different species using their behavioural training techniques. Along with animal trainer Bob Bailey, the Brelands and Animal Behaviour Enterprises literally revolutionized animal training with an approach firmly based in science.
What’s good for the chicken is good for the dog
Among the animals trained by ABE for use in advertising were chickens. Some of these chickens were taught to play a short melody on a toy piano and others were taught to dance on a small platform. Chickens can be difficult to train. They are fast moving and do not possess the natural affinity to humans that dogs have. This makes them excellent subjects for behavioural training and perfect helping trainers sharpen their skills with positive training techniques.
For nearly 20 years, Terry Ryan of Legacy Canine Behaviour & Training has been offering “Chicken Camps” to help trainers become more skilled at teaching animals. The same principles that apply to carefully observing, marking, and reinforcing behaviours in chickens also apply to dogs. If you can train a chicken with behavioural techniques, you can certainly use them to teach a dog. Or a rhinoceros, as it happens!
Rhinos and Ibis and Bears? Oh my!
What if you could teach a rhinoceros to “sit” on cue? How about teaching it to lie down and roll on its side on cue? This might sound ridiculous but that’s just what trainers at the Denver Zoo did. And it wasn’t just an exercise to see if they could do it. The behaviours are very useful in performing routine maintenance and medical procedures as well. You can see video of this amazing rhino on Karen Pryor’s column at clickertraining.com”; you will find it about half way down the page.
Bird keeper Elsa Mark of the Philadelphia Zoo had an issue with her Northern Bald Ibis. It seems that these birds developed a skin condition that was related to stress in that particular species. As you might guess, the routine maintenance of the Ibis habitat was a very stressful event for these birds. Training the birds to take food from the hand of a keeper, move to a target mat in response to a pointing cue, and even to voluntarily move in and out of transport crates on cue was accomplished in less than 3 months. And while this overall reduction in stress provided by the training improved the quality of the lives of the Ibis, something even more interesting happened. The Ibis began to play! For the first time since the Ibis had been kept at the Philadelphia Zoo, bird keepers began seeing an recording incidents of individual birds playing with leaves and then incidents where two or more birds would play the “leaf” game. The overall reduction in stress that positive training had provided didn’t just yield new behaviours in the birds, it seemed to allow them to open up to a more fulfilling lifestyle.
And the good news doesn’t stop here. Lizards, fish, birds of prey, hyenas, and even bears have been trained using behavioural science and reinforcement techniques. There seems to be no end to how behavioural science can be applied to training all kinds of species, even humans. The process of marking and reinforcing desired behaviours in humans is being developed by TAGteach International. Applications of behavioural training have been developed for improving occupational safety, teaching proper techniques in sports, and working with the autistic and disabled. It seems like positive training using behavioural science is making a positive contribution in the lives of many animals and many people as well.
Gone to the dogs
In a recent online interview, Canadian dog trainer Brad Pattison was quoted as saying that the idea of a Chicken Camp to teach animal trainers “sounds stupid.” Pattison goes on to say “Training a Chicken isn’t going to teach you anything about yourself or your abilities with dogs.” How is it that such a media personality and someone who certifies other dog trainers through his program could be ignorant of the fundamentals of behavioural science and how they apply to training not just to chickens, but to all animals including dogs!
There seems to be a separate world in which many dog trainers and dog owners live. In that world, the lessons learned from science about training techniques and principles simply do not apply to dogs. Behavioural and reinforcement training that works on everything from lizards to rhinos to people somehow doesn’t work as well on dogs, according to them. They have developed their own training methods involving shock collars, choke chains, intimidation, and fear. And where does their world and the rest of the world come together? There methods produce the results that people want. They can train well behaved dogs and do it well, if getting results is what matters.
But it does lead me to wonder how a dog trainer like Brad Pattison would solve the problem of moving a whale with his training methodologies. Could you really use a shock collar to teach a rhino to “sit” or “stay”? Maybe Cesar Millan would like to step into an enclosure with a bear and try one of his patented “Pssshhttt!” corrections on a black bear.
Interestingly, Ken Ramirez the marine mammal trainer can also train dogs. And monkeys. And birds. It seems that all of this positive reinforcement behavioural training works on dogs just as it has on dozens of other species. Remarkably we haven’t seen books from Millan, Pattison, or a host of other force trainers showing how their techniques can be used on other species. Perhaps that’s an important point. Perhaps their methods can only work on a species that was bred to work with humans no matter what. Perhaps they only work because the dog is just the right intelligence level, just the right physical size, and has just the right temperament to respond to their force-based approach.
Personally, my money is on the training science that works on hundreds of species and not just one. Training is not magic. Training is education. It’s teaching. And if everything from fish to birds to people can be taught using positive reinforcement, why would you waste time with anything else in training your dog? Frankly, I’m baffled.
Until next time, have fun with your dogs.
Cooperation is better than intimidation.
Photo credits –
Killer Whale – Antony Pranata 2009 from Flickr
Chicken Training – http://www.bluefencebassets.com/training.html 2008
Rhino – DJRphoto36 2011 from Flickr
Deborah Moore says
Love this article, Eric.
The mantra in my training is Click/Treat/Praise. Each time a new behavior is introduced, it’s Click/Treat/Praise. As the behavior becomes set, we no longer click. The treats become once every other time. then every third time, etc until they are basically phased out. The one part that is ALWAYS left in place is PRAISE. I believe we all need to hear we’ve done a job well. That praise includes affection, play, having special happy words, whatever makes your dog feel good and confident about “the job” that’s been done.
Even when I’ve clicker trained my cats, I’ve used the exact same process and 6-7 years later, the cats are doing just fine with ear rubs, chest scratches and head bumps as their reward.
Lynn Ungar says
Agility is a very different thing from obedience — it’s fast, has no breaks, and is intrinsically rewarding. (I do agility as well.) Obedience moves at a much slower pace and requires much more thinking and focus from the dog. An agility run takes maybe 40 seconds. A utility dog is in the ring for maybe 7 minutes. You can’t talk to the dog except between exercises and except during heeling the handler is stationary. Having a dog maintain enthusiasm for agility is simply not the same as having a dog maintain enthusiasm for obedience.
Let me point out that I am IN NO WAY saying that clicker training doesn’t work with dogs. It does, and I do it. What I am saying is that unlike chickens or rhinos, dogs have a desire to be in relationship with us and to play with us, and that ignoring that fact in our training is, I think, misguided. The most successful obedience competitor who uses clicker training that I know of is Denise Fenzi, who puts a huge amount of emphasis on building relationship and an experience of mutual play. If you don’t subscribe to her blog, do yourself a favor and subscribe — it’s terrific. (And yes, she’s the trainer I turned to when I realized the performance problem I’d created for myself.)
Eric Brad says
Hi Lynn –
I couldn’t agree more with what you are saying. Relationship and trust are of paramount importance in working with our dogs. The process of mark and reward (i.e., clicker) training forms a basic contract – you do for me, I do for you. It’s a promise. And if one is diligent about keeping that promise, it can only strengthen that bond of trust and the relationship.
I agree also that dogs are social animals. Their very nature offers us a wealth of possibilities for reinforcement that are not available in chickens and rhinos, as you point out. I’m not sure that a chicken would find the same value in social interaction that dogs do. We have bred them for centuries to be our closest animal companions. We would be foolish not to make the most of the wonderful traits we have built in them. Dogs are VERY responsive to relationship elements like honesty, trust, compassion, affection. I don’t think one can be a good dog trainer without attending to those aspects of the relationship regardless of the training techniques used.
Excellent points all around! Thanks so much for your message, Lynn!
Eric
Georgina Davies says
Hi, my dogs are clicker trained and do agility in the ring to the same standard ad they do in training. They seem to know that they have earnt their reward but that drives them on to work harder and faster. Is it possible that you are using the food as a lure?
Lynn Ungar says
While I don’t disagree with anything you say, I wonder if the emphasis on the fact that the principles of clicker trainer work with any kind of animal may sometimes lead us away from a focus on what is unique and wonderful about dogs — their desire to be in relationship with us. We learn to train silently, so that the dog can think while we shape a behavior. We learn to reward very frequently, as that produces the most rapid learning. These things work great with rhinos and ibis — and dogs. Until you want a dog who is reliable in an obedience ring where no food is present. After using these scientific principles to train a brilliant, eager, highly food motivated puppy to do a TON of stuff (obedience and freestyle) I got a dog who was amazing in the ring — the first two times, until she figured out there would be no food in that particular setting. It’s taken us a long time (compared to how fast she learned everything else) for me to teach her that it could be worth it to work for the joy of playing with me (with a little food now and then). We’ve had to learn how to play together without toys, and to make our relationship itself and my sincere praise a reward. That’s not going to happen with a chicken or a lizard, and I regularly read clicker trainers admonishing people that dogs cannot be expected to work “for free” — without food. While I’m certainly not opposed to training with food, I think my training was set back by my heavy reliance on food, without putting equal training reliance on the extraordinary and wonderful fact that a dog, unique among animals, wants to be with me, understand me, and play with me.
Eric Brad says
Hi Lynn –
If what you are suggesting is that dogs who are reinforcement trained will not perform at championship levels if there is no food present, there is rather a mountain of evidence to prove you wrong. While I don’t compete in Obedience, my dog is a Canadian Agility Champion and will complete her North American Dog Agility Council Championship this year. And this is to say nothing of the hundreds of people who have attained Obedience titles with positive reinforcement trained dogs.
It is a pity that your dog chose not to work in the ring without food present. My dogs do work for me without food present. In fact it happens daily. If you use the principles of Operant and Classical conditioning properly, you can condition secondary reinforcers (e.g., physical affection, play, toys, verbal praise, etc.) as a very suitable stand in for food. The more they are paired with food during the training process, the more durable a secondary reinforcer like verbal praise becomes. If, on the other hand, you choose to create verbal praise as a signal that the dog has successfully avoided an unpleasant reprimand, that works too.
The science and principles are sound. Your application of them on this particular dog may not have been the best application. You also may have had a dog that required a more skilled trainer or had special needs that were not being addressed. I can’t know your situation. What I can know is that the bulk of the data collected to date would suggest that it was not the science and principles that were at fault.
You may believe what you like about dogs and you should enjoy every moment with them that you can. They leave us far too soon.
Thanks for reading.
Eric
MM says
I’ve written on this and related subject on three occasions. One on the biochemical impediments force places on diagnostic reliability and two on the use of clicker on tortoise and squirrel monkeys. I too am baffled by the vitriolic resistance to anything that exists outside a jerk trainer’s dogmatic beliefs.
http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/training-a-tortoise-to-help-with-blood-work/
http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/clicker-training-for-squirrel-monkeys/
http://dogbehaviorscience.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/click-for-health/