Karen Pryor Clickertraining - Cues and Cueing

The Poisoned Cue: Positive and Negative Discriminative Stimuli

Karen Pryor — Tue, 25 Jun 2002 00:00:00 -0500

Why clicking and correction don't mix.

Behavior analysts refer to a learned stimulus that triggers an operant behavior as a 'discriminative stimulus.' The behaviorists do not, as far as I know, differentiate between a discriminative stimulus that was trained through positive reinforcement and one that was trained through negative reinforcement.

How to Teach Give: A Winning Recipe

Leah Roberts — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:10:00 -0500

By the time most dogs get to my classes, their owners have already taught them that when they get hold of something special, it's going to be taken away. Most of the time, the owners get upset, yell, and force the object out of their mouths. So, when dogs find that deliciously smelly dead squirrel in the yard, they are more likely to hide the squirrel under the couch than allow their owners to catch them with it.

What Makes a Reward Rewarding?

Kay Laurence — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 06:00:00 -0600

"Reward your dog." We've heard this many, many times in many formats. It takes a lot of experience to get the best from a reward—where the reward delivers everything the dog needs in order to offer the behavior again and again, with passion.

How to Teach Your Dog Left and Right

Aidan Bindoff — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

This is a fun exercise that is handier than it seems at first. You'll set up two targets at a distance, and teach your dog to go to either target—left or right—on cue. Later, you will set up similar exercises to bring more general meaning to the cues "left" or "right."

A dog that understands "left" and "right" has a terrific skill for many competition venues including agility, herding, mushing, water dog, and retrieving. This understanding would also be handy walking on trails—and service dog owners could think of a dozen or more applications for "left" and "right."

Lessons from Llamas

Karen Pryor — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Newcomers to operant training may place superstitious value on the specific tools they see others using, not realizing that it's the process, not the equipment, that counts.

Chasing Squirrels

Karen Pryor — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 00:00:00 -0500

In April of this year there was a discussion on the ClickerExpo Yahoo Group e-mail list about squirrel chasing. It became a hot topic, generating many opinions and replies. I responded to the ruckus with this post.

Are You a Leader, or Just a Treat Dispenser?

Aidan Bindoff — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 00:00:00 -0500

Have you ever felt that you really have no leadership role in your relationship with your dog because your dog is just performing for food? You are not alone.

Clicker Training a 2 on / 2 off Contact Behavior on the Dogwalk

Deborah Jones PhD — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Having a solid, reliable 2 on / 2 off contact behavior on the dogwalk is a great advantage in agility. The 2 on / 2 off is a clear, specific position that most dogs find easy to learn and perform. It also requires the dog to wait until you catch up and release him, which allows for better handling of subsequent sequences. My method for training this behavior involves early foundation skills, clicking for correct position, feeding in position, and back-chaining.

How to Put An End to Counter-Surfing

Aidan Bindoff — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:00:00 -0600

Many dog owners complain that their dogs steal food from kitchen counters or even the dinner table. A new term was even coined to describe this behavior: counter-surfing. If you're tired of losing your dinner to a sneaky pooch every time you turn your back, here's what you can do about it.

Cues as Information

Karen Pryor — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 00:00:00 -0500

We think of cues as something you must deliberately attach to a behavior, with a reinforcer to follow. But you can also give cues that are purely information, not deliberately trained as antecedents to a particular response.

Reinforcing Doing Nothing

Karen Pryor — Mon, 01 May 2006 00:00:00 -0500

Q: I have been reading through all the articles on your website. I found one area of interest that is a little confusing for me. I have trained my dog using the clicker and she will do every trick on cue (with a word). When I bring my clicker out to try to teach a new behavior, my dog goes crazy and starts offering many behaviors. You state in the articles that a dog who does this doesn't know the behaviors on cue. But my girl will do all of them on cue. I am finding it hard to get her focused. Why is she going so crazy? Also, why do owners say their dog will only listen when clicker is present?

Training Your Rabbit to Jump on Cue

Joan Orr — Sun, 01 Jan 2006 00:00:00 -0600

There are many different ways a bunny can jump. She can jump over a pole, through a hoop, onto a platform, or into a basket. This trick teaches your bunny to jump over a pole, but with some creative baby steps, jumping can easily be generalized to jumping in other situations.

"Who's Pulling My Leg?": Durability of Clicker Trained Cues

Debi Davis — Sat, 01 Oct 2005 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's note: Debi Davis is an innovative, skilled clicker trainer, who writes well to boot. Whenever one of her keen observations comes our way, we're delighted—and hurry to share it with visitors to clickertraining.com. Recently, Debi wrote to tell us a story about her service Border collie, Finn. As with all of Debi's stories, it contains an insight: clicker training provides true learning, and behaviors taught through it are not forgotten. Therefore, we asked Emma Parsons, KPCT's training director and author of Click to Calm: Healing the Aggressive Dog, to add her comments on the light that Debi's piece sheds on the durability of clicker trained cues.

Poisoning the Process

Lynn Loar — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 00:00:00 -0500

A trainer can poison the process of learning without poisoning individual cues (that is, despite using positive reinforcement exclusively). This comes about unwittingly—and ironically—because of the trainer's expertise, focus, and purposefulness.

"Clicking" With Cues: A Powerful Tool in Agility Handling

Karen Pryor — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 00:00:00 -0600

Here's something people often don't get, and not just in agility training: cues—the signals you give your dog to tell it what to do—can be clicks. If your cue tells the dog to do something it understands, and something with a guaranteed positive outcome or reinforcer as a result, it becomes a potential reinforcer in itself. And you can use it to shape behavior.

Training Paired Cues: "Bark/Be Quiet"

Karen Pryor — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 00:00:00 -0500

At ClickerExpo last season, Karen Pryor talked about paired or "opposite" cues, and gave the "bark/be quiet" pair as an example. This is an easy pair to train as a demonstration if you happen to have a very barky dog handy. The concept of teaching cues in pairs is new to many dog trainers, although a familiar tool to some marine mammal trainers.

Reinforcing Cues from a Distance

Karen Pryor — Sun, 01 Aug 2004 00:00:00 -0500

Q: I'm training my dog, an English springer spaniel, to do signals for Utility obedience competition. My dog understands what the sit signal is. When I am close he sits up like a rocket, as I get further he sometimes hesitates, and if too far, doesn't do it at all. If I go back, again he sits up like a rocket. However, when I go just a bit further, he sits on the signal but moves forward a bit. I have used things to prevent him from moving forward but they only temporarily fix the problem. I'm looking for some guidance on building a sit signal so my dog eventually understands that I can give the signal when I'm 20 feet away from him. I'm not in a hurry and am willing to build; just not sure I'm going about it right.

Adding the Cue

Karen Pryor — Thu, 01 Jul 2004 00:00:00 -0500

When we first start out clicker training, we tend to get very excited about the fact that we can teach the dog a new behavior in just a few clicks. Suddenly we have a dog that sits, does a belly flop down, a spin, a paw wave, and six other things-but all at once. You're hoping for a sit/stay, and the dog is running through his entire repertoire trying to find something you'll click.

A Swinging Pair: Using Paired Cues to Accelerate Learning

Karen Pryor — Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 -0600

Train two behaviors at once? Teach two cues simultaneously? How? Why? Teaching certain cues in pairs can speed up the learning process, as well as teaching a dog a concept that it can apply to new learning.

Performance Jitters

Kay Laurence — Wed, 01 May 2002 00:00:00 -0500

If the learning is sufficiently shaped and reinforced to the best it can be, and reliability is achieved at this level; and if, then, this standard is attached to a new "performance cue", then there is no reason for the dog to give a reduced quality or reliability in show circumstances unless the stress level has gone beyond the dog's self management. Even then asking the dog for a strong, favourite behavior can reduce the stress significantly.