Lucille [Lynn's much adored rescued dog] is hypervigilent about her toe nails and hates having them touched. I had clicker trained her to tolerate having them clipped, some years ago, but it was done by the groomer, and Terry, who used to take her to the groomer, is no longer here. I cannot press hard enough with the nail clippers to cut her nails, so the toenail quandary arose again.
Dogs
Online Discussion with Karen Pryor: Clicker Training in the Shelter Environment
By KPCT on 08/01/2002This discussion took place via Yahoo. People joined the Karen Pryor online Yahoo Group ahead of time or during the day, and could read the posts as e-mail or at the Yahoo Group site. Over 300 people participated.
At the end of the day we closed the site, planning to keep it available as a read-only archive. We ran into trouble with that, but luckily our webmaster, Greg Parsons, had maintained a file of all the e-mails as they arrived. So, working from that file, I've been able to prepare an abridged text version of the day's discussion. I removed advertisements, headers and footers, and off-topic letters. I also removed a few questions by accident; I hope the content of the answers will make the questions clear. Please accept my apologies for any annoying or serious omissions or errors that may have occurred during this process. Whatever got left out is entirely my fault.
A Day with Kay Laurence
By Karen Pryor on 07/01/2002The big training event around here recently was a quickly organized one-day workshop for fifteen lucky clicker trainers, taught by British clicker teacher Kay Laurence. Mary Ann Callahan did an incredible job of pulling a workshop together on short notice. (Kay made the trip to deliver my daughter Gale Pryor's new border collie puppy, Pheobe. Gale who is editor and book production supervisor at Sunshine Books, saw the litter on our business trip to the UK in March and found the perfect apprentice for the now-elderly family border collie Esme. Ezzie, who helped raise all three of Gale's little boys, has taken on her new charge with complete calm, treats her kindly but firmly, and really does teach the puppy what to do, an interesting sight.)
10 Steps to Become a Clicker Shelter...On Your Own!
By Karen Pryor on 07/01/2002The very first steps in clicker training are exactly the steps that shelters need most: not full-blown obedience training, just some simple techniques to reduce barking, improve calmness and confidence in dogs and cats, and make animals friendlier and more oriented to people.
Here are 10 steps that will help you be successful even without a clicker teacher:
A Cooperative Patient Is Just A Click Away
By KPCT on 06/11/2002Most pet owners are familiar by now with clicker training. Versions of the training, also known as operant conditioning, have been used to teach commands to dogs, cats, dolphins, and a number of other creatures. And now trainers have another use for it—controlling animals during visits to the veterinarian, or a stay at a shelter.
