It's interesting how sometimes, I find myself explaining clicker training to someone and doing that this question pops into my head, thing I haven actually thought about before and I realize I have no answer to it and have no idea why is something happening. And I realize how I don't understand clicker training as well as i thought I did.
so, the question is: If one of the ways to get rid of the unwanted behavior is to put it on cue, i.e. when you put a behavior on cue it's not supposed to occur unless you give a cue, how come my dog still sits and lies down? For example, I captured my 'settle and relax' and it's been put on cue. But, my dog will still lay down and relax when bored or whatever. Why?
I wouldn't say my training was bad, my dog lays and relaxes when I tell him to, but he does that even when I don't tell him too. And that kind of contradicts the theory I started with. I've seen advice on getting rid of alarm barking by putting it on cue.. but why wouldn't dog continue doing it even when he's not provided with a cue, the same thing he's doing with a down?
I'm really confused here, so I would appreciate some help...
Marking in the house
I have a client that has come to me with a problem of her dog marking all around the house. He is three now and is still doing it. He also was neutered as a puppy. I am going tonight to get more information about the problem. I need to know whether they have taught the "let's go potty" cue. Would this be what we do? Teach a cue and then not ask for that cue? It seems like I would be reinforcing the marking.
Elimination on cue
Putting elimination on cue is a great idea because it puts a handle on the behavior, especially when you're out in the freezing rain wanting quick elimination so you can come back inside ASAP!
You would be reinforcing elimination outside only, never inside.
Here are the instructions for teaching elimination on cue (under "Handling", scroll down, towards bottom of page).
Regards,Aidanhttp://www.PositivePetzine.com
The cue is a discriminating
The cue is a discriminating stimulus. When you use the cue, you signal that you are likely to reinforce the behavior at this time.
If the behavior is being reinforced without the cue, then putting it on cue isn't going to help.
If you have the behavior under stimulus control, then all salient antecedents (there may be several) must be present for the behavior to occur.
If you want to use stimulus control to stop inappropriate alarm barking, then you really need to set up situations where appropriate barking is reinforced and inappropriate barking is not reinforced, or is punished. The cue might be "person close to property", whereas, "person walking past house" would not be reinforced.
This is not a problem in our current house, but in our last house I trained Django to bark when people were actually on our property and not when kids were playing in the vacant block next door. It worked very well. A paved drive crossed the front of our property, and when walked upon footsteps had a distinct sound which was his cue to bark.
Regards,
Aidan
http://www.PositivePetzine.com
ok, but...
I think Don't Shot the dog says something like this:
Method 6
Put the behavior on cue. (Then you almost never give the cue.) This is an elegant way of getting rid of unwanted behavior, but so counterintuitive most people just can’t bring themselves to try it. Click the behavior; get the dog offering it for the click. Add a cue. Reinforce the behavior when you have cued it, ignore it when you haven’t. The behavior will disappear except when cued. This is one way to get rid of puppyish appeasement behaviors such as frantic facelicking; pawing and begging; jumping up; intrusive sniffing; barking and whining; scratching at doors; and (trust me) submissive urination. These are all innate puppy-to-adult-dog behaviors that we often intensify both by getting angry and by inadvertent reinforcement.
I don't have the book here. but i found this here:www.armbcr.org/files/Clicker%20Basics.pdf
it does mention attention seeking behavior, but it also says: The behavior will disappear except when cued.
also, I had better success with solving attention seeking behavior by either ignoring it or training some other behavior and than replacing the old one with the new one.
Sanja Miklin
3/205
LPC UWC, Hong Kong
Putting unwanted behavior on cue only works when...
... you are working your dog.
If you have sit and down on stimulus control, it means that you dog will sit and down on cue and only on cue when the dog is 'working'. When the dog is not working, the dog is free to do whatever it wants including sit and down. This also applies to barking once it is on cue. Only while working will the barking be on stimulus control.
This means that putting barking on cue will only solve the problem for certain types of barking (attention barking). In attention barking, the dog barks to get your attention or to get you to through the ball. In attention barking, you control the reinforcer, so you can control whether the barking will get reinforced (such as only reinforce when you give the cue).
Putting barking on cue won't be as effective for altert barking.