What is the perfect clicker class? That's the question (and I welcome your answers!). It crystallized for me this month when I attended the annual meeting of APDT.
APDT meeting
The Association of Pet Dog Trainers is an organization worth knowing about. It was started eleven years ago by the well-known veterinarian, author, and lecturer Ian Dunbar and a group of friends, trainers, and instructors. They felt the need to expand the educational opportunities, skill levels, and recognition factors for people who just have pets, and who teach people who just have pets. Not breeders with show dogs-we have the AKC for that. Not people whose primary interest is competing in dog-related sports; but the rest of us. Anybody can join; you just have to be interested in positive training for pet dogs.
The first APDT meeting, eleven years ago, drew some three hundred people. I joined soon after that. I'm member #830 (and proud to have that low number). I've often been one of the speakers at APDT annual meetings, talking about or teaching clicker training. Today APDT reports they have over 7,000 members. About one thousand of them were in Denver for this year's gathering.
New clicker products and special events
I attended this year's APDT meeting in part to introduce upcoming new products:
We showed cover designs and talked about Click to Calm, Emma Parsons's upcoming and revolutionary book on using the clicker to defuse aggression and build confidence in timid or overly-reactive dogs. It's due out in January and you can see Emma teach workshops on this topic at both ClickerExpo.
We showed prototypes of what's next in clicker design: the new Clicker+, an innovative product that allows you to choose between four different chip-generated marker sounds. We hope to have the actual product in November; I'll tell you more about the possibilities then. In the meantime, trainers continue to learn about and use the i-Click and seem to just love it. Thanks for all the clicks!
We introduced our new Affiliate program, which allows you to earn money by offering KPCT products on your own website. It's really quite simple to become an Affiliate.
We showcased the next (and only!) big clicker educational conferences, ClickerExpo. Lots of APDT trainers are going and many registered right at the booth. Almost every course at ClickerExpo qualifies for full continuing education credits from CPDT. To register, or if you have questions, call 781-784-5434 or go to www.clickerexpo.com.
The first Expo is coming up next month in Orlando, November 5-7. You can still register but I urge you to act quickly. ClickerExpo brings a uniquely talented and positive group of people into one arena. It's an electric atmosphere that you shouldn't miss with a faculty that can be found nowhere else. What other educational forum earns a 98% satisfaction rating from the attendees? (Read reviews from attendees.) Where else can you have dinner with your favorite Expo faculty member in the evening and talk about the most intriguing lessons of the day? But you must act quickly if you want to go on our special backstage of tour of SeaWorld or the special trainers tour of Disney Animal Kingdom. Special hotel rates expire soon, so if you are thinking you might come, now's the time to act. The second Expo is in San Diego, January 28-30, where we're busy planning other special features and backstage tours-watch for announcements soon!
Clicker training vs. lure and reward
Amidst all those APDT teachers and instructors, I thought a lot about teaching: teaching the art and science of the clicker. ClickerExpo faculty member Kathy Sdao has given this topic a lot of thought too. At APDT she presented a socko four-hour workshop-titled, with a tip of the hat to poet Ogden Nash, "Candy is Dandy but Clicker is Quicker"-on the REAL differences between clicker training and lure-and-reward training.
Why is clicking a more powerful way to teach a behavior than walking the animal through the moves by holding a piece of food against its nose? In clicker training, the animal is thinking about what behavior caused the click, and how it can do that behavior again so it can get some food. In luring, the animal is thinking about the food, and following the food until it gets some. Whatever else it might happen to be doing-sitting, lying, heeling, turning, going across obstacles-is overshadowed by the presence of the food. If you happen to add a clicker, that's overshadowed too, Kathy told us. The food has been there before, during, and after-so the clicker makes no particular difference. It doesn't tell the dog which behavioral moment actually earned the eventual delivery of the food.
I saw quite a few lure-and-reward trained dogs at last season's three ClickerExpos, and I soon noticed that in some ways they were all alike. They were docile. They would sit or lie quietly when lured into position. They would walk quietly wherever their owners went. They usually didn't lunge at strangers or try to play with other dogs. They were compliant; but they were also rather unresponsive. Owners were apt to steer them with the leash or lure them with food, rather than speaking to them. They often did not seem to recognize verbal commands.
It wasn't a bad arrangement. The dogs got food now and then all day long and the owner got a compliant, rather inactive dog. I can see why "lure and reward" has become popular. Compared to the most widely used alternative-traditional, correction-based obedience-type training-it has many advantages. It's easier to teach. It's easier for the pet owner to learn. You don't need so many physical skills. You don't need to "dominate" your dog. And it's MUCH easier on the dogs.
But. It's not clicker training. The dogs aren't "operant"-trying to learn, able to understand and communicate, offering behavior (including sitting, lying quietly, walking at side) with confidence and understanding. And that's not the fault of the students but of us teachers.
The perfect class
To most people, a beginner class is a class where the dogs learn to sit, down, stay, heel, and maybe come. Five behaviors, six or eight weeks.
Sit, down, and stay, however, are not good clicker behaviors. They all involve stopping the dog from moving. The aim is to remove behavior, not to build it. There's nothing to click, except longer and longer periods of doing nothing! This is not what clicker training is for, and it doesn't teach the dogs how to think; it doesn't make them into clicker dogs. So maybe for a start, in our perfect beginner class, we need different behaviors: walking, moving, active behaviors.
But it's not just that. I think we need a whole new plan. Maybe a CLICKER class should teach the skills the people need, not the skills the dogs need. How to observe. How to "catch" an incredibly brief movement with your clicker. How to hand over ten treats in twenty seconds. How to choose what to click next. How to click when you have a leash in one hand and treats in the other. How to focus on your dog, not on what people must be thinking about you. How to develop a cue. How to use cues that work, not cues that don't work. How to read your dog's mind.
I talked to a lot of teachers at APDT. Massachusetts clicker instructor Tibby Chase, who gave an interesting talk last year on using chairs in clicker classes, told me about her new way of teaching people to teach dogs to "walk by me." It involves lots of clicks, lots of treats, lots of traffic cones-and no leashes. Leslie Nelson of Tails U Win takes polite walking a few steps further-seventy-five steps, in fact-and her students are conquering competition heeling. In both cases, it's the people who have to learn; the clicker-wise dogs figure out their job from the start. Maybe we need to be clicking the people, not just the dogs!
The "perfect" clicker class is evolving. You're going to hear more from me about this. But I think we know where to begin. And I'd love to hear your thoughts. Write to me! karen [at] clickertraining [dot] com.
Karen Pryor is the founder and CEO of Karen Pryor Clicker Training and Karen Pryor Academy. She is the author of many books, including Don't Shoot the Dog and Reaching the Animal Mind. Learn more about Karen Pryor or read Karen's Letters online.
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