Good idea number one: Kay has developed a way of assessing the clicker skills of individual trainers. The program tests the trainer's abilities, not the dog's performance. The test is valuable not so much as a measure of achievement but as a clear-cut way of finding out what you know and what you still need to find out, a very difficult thing to judge for yourself.
Dogs
Beginners' Edge
By Karen Pryor on 10/01/2003It's like computers. I had an awful time with my first computer--'word processing' was NOT easy to learn. I plowed through some terrible software learning curves, with some truly terrible softwear. Even the games could have you kicking the walls. My grandkids, however, start off where I am now, doing research on the Internet, throwing graphics into their e-mails, playing amazing games. What was hard, then, is easy now.
Learning by Observation: Dogs
By KPCT on 09/01/2003From Tarrah Skowronski, Phoenix, AZ: Only yesterday that I was amazed at my own dog "learning by observation" of another dog! I have a little rat terrier mix named Brie, and I take her to the dogpark constantly. She has struck up a friendship/playship at the dogpark with a little Border collie. Now this Border's way of playing is by laying in wait and stalking Brie, then laying down again before suddenly bursting full speed to pounce and/or chase Brie. Brie LOVES this and they do this over and over, with Brie being the "prey" or should I say "sheep." They have been playing like this for about 2 weeks, and we go to the dogpark 3-5 times a week generally.
101 Things to Do with a Polar Bear
By Karen Pryor on 07/01/2003I recently posted some reports from the zoo world about using the 'creative' game-training an animal to think up its own behaviors-with a gorilla. 101 things to do with a Gorilla. People sometimes think of the training we do as something artificial. Why would you want to demean the animal by making it play games? Never mind if the animal loves the game! Furthermore, to some people the '101 things to do with a Box' game seems particularly confusing and problematic when applied to dogs. How does the dog 'know' what to do if you don't tell it? Why would you want it to just guess?
Speed Shaping
By Debi Davis on 07/01/2003I have a young Papillon, Harry Potter, in training to be Peek's replacement as a service dog. At 13 months, he's showing extraordinary potential. He is a master at throwing behaviors to be reinforced, and picks up stuff so quickly at times I look at him and wonder if he's a Border collie.
