In my previous post, I mentioned that some of the things I teach my animals are to cue me for certain behaviors. There are some things where I give the cue and want a behavior from them - and there are some things where I want them to cue me to get a behavior from me. I don't know how often we think about that when we write our training plan for a specific task in our training diaries
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My dog rings a bell when he wants to go out: The cue is "RING THE BELL" - the behavior is "BOB OPENS THE DOOR".
I guess I normally think of 'opening the door' as the reinforcer. But in actuallity, I think opening the door is the behavior and 'ringing the bell' truly is the cue. Of course, we think that animals think this way all the time - but maybe they see a difference too. I think my parrot, Kilo, gets it.
In this case, you have to train several in steps:
- Get the dog to ring the bell.
- Put ringing the bell on cue.
- Cue the bell, get the bell, open the door.
- Wait for the cue, do the behavior.
My dog actually uses two cues when he wants more food: first he rings the bell to get my attention, then he paws his food container to tell me he wants food. If he just wants out, he just rings the bell and waits by the door.
I think this distinction of figuring out when I am teaching the animal to give a cue that I follow with a behavior will help me in my training.
