Karen Pryor is an author and a scientist with an international reputation in the fields of marine mammal biology and behavioral psychology. Through her work with dolphins in the 1960s , she pioneered modern, force-free animal training methods, and became an authority on applied operant conditioning —the art and science of changing behavior with positive reinforcement. She is a founder and leading proponent of clicker training, a worldwide movement involving new ways to communicate positively with pets and other animals. She is the author of several books, including Nursing Your Baby , a classic book for breastfeeding mothers that has sold over a million copies, and more than 50 scientific papers and popular articles on learning and behavior.
Dogs
Clicker Classics: Getting to the Core
By Aaron B. Clayton on 09/01/2005That's why I like the experience of ClickerExpo. We get past so many training contradictions. We get them sorted out because the faculty, despite their diverse backgrounds, practice core clicker training the same way.
At ClickerExpo San Diego in January 2005, for example, there was a lot of good discussion among attendees about whether or not, for optimal results, a treat should always follow the click. Yes it should. No it shouldn't. Usually. Maybe. And so on.
Click and Laugh
By KPCT on 08/01/2005This happened almost two years ago but I'll never forget it. I was training my then 6-month-old female Boxer pup, Tir na nOg, and I was attempting to teach her to "Stay" on her bed. She knew the cue to "Go to her Bed" and if I asked for it she would do it.
This one night I happened to have ordered some takeout food and was sitting down on the couch to watch TV and eat. I asked Tir to go to her bed and while EXTREMELY reluctant she did it. She kept staring at me and wanting to get up to come over but I would give her the "Look" and she wouldn't move.
Helix Fairweather on the Art of Dog Play
By Gale Pryor on 08/01/2005Helix Fairweather became interested in the skills dogs need—and too often do not have—to play happily with other dogs. She decided to launch a series of Dog Park play sessions to allow skilled dogs to teach other dogs the art of playing and to teach handlers the observation skills necessary to understand canine communication.
Adding the Cue: An Excerpt from Click for Joy
By Melissa Alexander on 08/01/2005For two reasons: First, when the pup is learning the behavior, we want him to concentrate on the behavior. At that point, the cue is meaningless to him anyway—just another bit of "noise" to sort through. In the beginning, make learning easier on your dog by minimizing distractions, including meaningless cue words. Second, we want the cue to be associated with the final, perfect form of the behavior. If you add the cue in the beginning, you run the risk of having an unfinished version of the behavior crop up with you least want it to—like during the stress of competition—even though you continued to shape a more precise behavior.
