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Well-Trained Pets Are Just a Click Away

By KPCT on 02/01/2005

by Laura Mahoney

Originally published in the Times Picayune, December 16, 2004

Does your dog look at you cockeyed when you ask him to sit? Does your cat use your couch as a scratching post? If you answered yes, treat yourself to a clicker kit for Christmas.

Clicker training is all the rage, and it really works. For many years, clickers or whistles were used to train marine mammals. Punishment, our typical method for training others, is futile when working with giant animals that cannot be physically controlled.

The Phoebe Chronicles XII: What Drives a Border Collie?

By Gale Pryor on 02/01/2005

Clearly, Phoebe's comfort level with children, to the degree that she seeks them out and prefers their company to all but mine, is a gift from her mother. It's a part of "the inherited pack of traits," as her breeder Kay Laurence says, that could have been put to use gentling a lamb, but has been applied instead to coddling children.

Samples of Negative Reinforcement

By Karen Pryor on 02/01/2005

Negative reinforcement can be used to shape behavior. As with positive reinforcement, the reinforcer must be contingent upon the behavior: one must cease "prodding" when the response is correct. Unfortunately, because the prodding, in whatever form results in a change in behavior, the behavior of the person doing the prodding may be positively reinforced, so that, as with punishing, the tendency to lay on with the aversives increases.

Honor and the Honor Roll

By Karen Pryor on 02/01/2005

We have an Honor Roll on our current website. There are hundreds of dogs on the list, plus some cats, rabbits, and birds. There are numerous perfect obedience scores of 200; lots of obedience degrees, agility titles, and search and rescue and disaster dog achievements (a clicker-trained FEMA dog searched the Pentagon on 9/11). And yes, there are OTCh dogs too. Take a look.

Introducing: Clicker+