I spent most of March in England, launching new British line of the Karen Pryor brand clicker training books in a joint venture with Ringpress, a British publishing company. I worked with a lot of British clicker trainers and British clicker dogs, and signed books for four days at Crufts, the world's biggest dog show. It was a dazzling experience. Here are some highlights:
- New line of Karen Pryor clicker books in the UK
- Clicker at Crufts, world's biggest dog show
- Meet Kay Laurence and other top British clicker trainers
- Bringing home clicker-related treasures
- Clicker Challenge: behavior of the month
New line of Karen Pryor clicker books in the UK
John Sellers and Nick Kent, founders of British pet publishing company Ringpress, are big new fans of clicker training. So far they've published a British edition of Don't Shoot the Dog; Alexandra Kurland's Clicker Training for Your Horse in hardcover and full color; and Getting Started: Clicker Training for Dogs (published in the original US edition as A Dog and a Dolphin). The new British hardcover edition has many updates and additions, a new chapter on clicker training, and wonderful color photos showing British clicker trainer Paddy Driscoll and her students and dogs.
My daughter Gale Pryor, who is editor in chief and production manager for Sunshine Books, came with me for the first week to meet with her counterparts at Ringpress. The second week, company president Aaron Clayton came over to meet with our British colleagues on the business side.
We also brought the new Click to Win to Crufts. Lots of people were buying Click to Win for the show ring info-what the Brits call 'ringcraft.' But lots were also buying it for the second half of the book, six chapters on advanced clicker training topics.
Karen signing her books at Crufts
I signed books all four days at the big Ringpress booth, and had a wonderful time meeting and talking to hundreds of clicker trainers from England, Ireland, Australia, Germany and other European countries, and even South Africa and explaining clicker training to beginners. (One visitor remarked, on leaving the booth, "Ringpress must be a wonderful publisher, they have such knowledgeable shop assistants!")
Clicking at Crufts, world's biggest dog show
There is nothing anywhere else quite like Crufts. Five huge adjoined exhibit halls, 12,000 dogs (Westminster, in comparison, has 2500 dogs), four days and evenings, with, by my count, sixteen breed rings and five huge performance rings, all running continuously. It always took me half an hour to get from one end to the other, and longer if the crowds were jammed.
There are hundreds of vendors and special pavilions and displays. Gale and I especially enjoyed the huge array of 'Discover Dogs' booths, presenting dogs of every breed that's recognized by the British registry, and some that aren't. You could talk to breeders, read the literature, pat the dogs, and get to know each breed one-on-one.
Clicker training was everywhere. The British Kennel Club doesn't officially recognize one sort of training over another, but you could hear clicks galore from many demonstrations at the Kennel Club's rings, such as Nina Bonderenko's amazing all-clicker assistance dog program and the British APDT demos. Clickers were for sale at dozens of vendors and being given away in press kits and with Winalot treats samples at the many Friskies stands.
The launch of the new British edition of Clicker Training for Dogs was sponsored by Friskies UK, and included a champagne press reception in their huge two-story pavilion. I was on stage to demonstrate clicker training with dogs that Friskies had found for me: a young Border Collie and a six-month-old Airedale mix. (And what were these pet dogs doing at Crufts, amongst all the champions of champions? One was in the Discover Dogs display and the other was there for a Canine Good Citizens competition.)
The dogs had never heard a clicker before, but as British clicker expert Kay Laurence points out, "People may not understand the clicker, but the dogs understand it right away." In five minutes apiece each dog learned to sit on cue, to put itself in heel position and stay there, and a couple of tricks.
Then the Friskies photographers wanted the dogs to pose with some VIP's. I clicked and treated the dogs in unison, and they gave me a doubles act. They learned to pose on either side of me and to move into new positions by following my hands. They learned to gaze at me for clicks, at the camera for clicks, and at a copy of Britain's Dog World magazine, with a big spread on clicker training, for clicks. These beginner dogs worked hard and continuously for another half hour.
They had fun, too, giving me glowing eye contact and wagging tails. The watching owners seemed to be pleased, too, and got free books, clickers, and of course samples of Friskies Winalot treats.
Meet Kay Laurence and other top British clicker trainers
British freestyle star Mary Ray
with her performance champions
While Ringpress, Friskies, and Interpet, another British pet products company, were our business hosts in the UK, our clicker training experience was richly provided by Kay Lawrence and her students (www.learningaboutdogs.com.)
Kay is a merry, wisecracking Welshwoman, a college professor by profession and clicker teacher by calling. Acting as our clicker host and guide throughout the trip, Kay took care of us beautifully. At Crufts, Kay Laurence and her colleagues presented clicker training demonstrations in the Kennel Club ring twice a day, drawing big crowds and featuring events such as teaching an audience member to 'dance' with a freestyle dog. A clicker-trained Gordon setter named Arnold provided comic relief. When asked, "Would you like to go shopping?" he collapsed and put his paws over his eyes; and when asked, "Or would you rather watch football?" he sprang joyously into the air. Arnold also glues his nose to a can of dogfood, without moving, no matter what he is asked.
Kay breeds Border Collies and Gordon setters, and keeps several of each breed (and one half-and-half, oops) at home. Gale visited Kay's farm and much preferred the Border Collies. Nevertheless I had a lot of fun with Arnold at Crufts and in my own clicker seminars the following week. He keeps you honest. He'll work till he drops, but the moment I started talking to a bystander instead of maintaining eye contact, Arnold headed off across the floors of Crufts to look for pheasants. He soon trained me to focus on him very closely!
Kay's Gordon setters, and I quote Kay, are "a dangerous combination of high energy and low intelligence." Their beauty is indisputable. Arnold's brother, Kent, shown by Kay, placed nicely in his breed at Crufts on Saturday. But I learned to keep a fending arm ready, as they all tend to bash into people without warning and give big smoochy kisses on chin or ear, leaving drool all over one's previously clean shirt. Just part of their jock-type charm.
Invitation-only workshop for some top British clicker trainers
Obedience at Crufts is really tough. Just to get there you have to win three high-in-trials in that particular year. Kay has been a top obedience winner at Crufts. Her students include Mary Ray, who has taken both agility and obedience top prizes several years at Crufts, and now provides an annual freestyle performance that is the entertainment high point of the final Crufts evening and broadcast nationally by the BBC.
On the Wednesday after Crufts, Kay organized a private half-day workshop for 16 people by invitation only. I was honored to be meeting, let alone teaching, trainers such as Attila Szkukalek, an incomparable freestyler, and Mary herself. Mary's glamorous 2002 Crufts routine concluded spectacularly, with two dogs working around her in elaborate formations mostly on their hind legs. Attila's Charlie Chaplin routine, which he had performed earlier at Crufts, is the best comic dog sequence I have ever seen, and very difficult (can your dog do a piaffe? Prance in place on cue? Attila's can.)
I set the private class a challenge from Click to Win, an exercise in using a known cue, instead of a click, to reinforce a tough behavior such as standing on a wobbly board. Every person and every dog succeeded; and my informal poll found that everyone got the message too: positively-trained cues are phenomenally powerful reinforcers in themselves. (This is the topic of the scientific paper I am struggling with at the moment.)
Kay sets her students some pretty hard challenges. Here's a new one: To get into her upcoming six-month advanced course you get a menu of entry requirements from which you can choose one challenge. Two of the selections: Demonstrate that you have trained your dog to a) trot in place, like Attila's dog or b) skip rope.
Karen (in hat) and Kay Laurence (next to Karen)
with training workshop participants
I had been thinking about the rope trick, and, happily, Kay had brought a skipping rope to the workshop and one student had a dog that would jump on command. Kay and I turned the rope, working out the training process as we went. At first the owner cued the dog from behind Kay. Then we put the owner into the rope's loop as well and by gosh we got it, a dog and a person jumping rope. We were able to use the click marker to communicate to the dog, in just a few clicks, that it should transfer its attention from the owner's cue to the visual information of the traveling rope, and it learned to time its sideways jump perfectly, better than the person in fact. Great stuff, boy.
On the Sunday before I returned home, Kay organized a public seminar for over 200 people, at which I was delighted to see old friends including Elizabeth Kershaw, and Angela Curtis and her dog Freddie. Freddie did a great job with 101 things to do with a chair, five years ago, and now repeated it. Only now he's so good at it that he figured out three chair-related behaviors, picked by the audience, in two or three clicks apiece for the most part. It went by so fast I'm not sure people knew what they were watching.
Bringing home clicker-related treasures
The whole trip to England was a heartwarming experience. Dogs are so well accepted there. No wonder clicker training is burgeoning. Spring had just come to the beautiful Cotswolds; and we explored the golden-stoned thatched villages, little brooks, ancient stone churches and bridges, and rolling green fields dotted with daffodils, sheep and new lambs.
It's not just the stone farmhouses and towns that are 500 or 700 years old. Kay explained to us that the very fields, hedgerows, and the public footpaths that link the little hill towns are often exactly where they have been for hundreds and hundreds of years. Sometimes even the sheep are exactly where they have been for hundreds and hundreds of years, each flock knowing which part of the common grazing belongs to them and which part to some scary Other Sheep. The knowledge is passed down from ewes to lambs and from sheep dogs to pups through the generations. Tragically, the hoof-and-mouth epidemic of 2001 resulted in the loss of entire flocks, and in many cases this ancient knowledge along with the sheep.
So, we bring home happy memories, and some souvenirs. I kept stopping at the art displays at Crufts. I ended up buying some limited edition signed prints, from paintings by current British artists, most of whom were there to chat with customers. "Window of Opportunity," three springer spaniels climbing into a farmhouse kitchen window. A Westie puppy giving a bouncy play invitation to large old hen with a sharp eye and a sharp beak ...the title is "Make my Day." A Border Terrier streaking away from an angry trotting plowhorse who is chasing this nuisance out of the pasture, titled "In trouble again."
The Pryor tribe's newest
member-to-be, at four weeks
And, one more souvenir is still on its way. My daughter Gale's family dog, Ezzie, a Border collie, is 10 years old now now. She has helped to raise Gale's three boys, chaperones all the toddlers in the neighborhood, plays a reliable second base and soccer goalie, and knows a lot of clicker tricks including how to politely salute the local Animal Control Officer. I picked Ezzie's bloodline; she's full sister to a Border collie I ran into many years ago and thought had the nicest temperament I'd ever seen, calm, cordial, and affectionate. We feared we might never replace Ezzie, the ultimate family dog, with another Border collie, because most of those we see are so very intense. Yet, Ezzie cannot live forever, we all sadly realize. So...a lot of thought has gone into choosing another breed, over the last couple of years...until Gale and I discovered that there are LOTS of calm collies in the Cotswolds. And some of them are bred by Kay. Who happened to have new puppies. Sired by Mary Ray's great obedience/agility/freestyle dog Taz.
When I go back to England in May, to promote the new British version of Clicker Training for Cats (hard-cover and full of color photos) I'll bring a puppy home in my luggage. Kay says all her puppies are raised by her older dogs, and predicts that Ezzie will cheerfully accept the task of training an apprentice. We will see. The real question is whether or not Gale's new Border collie puppy can play a mean second base.
Clicker challenge: Behavior of the Month
In February I told you about the DogRead clicker behavior contest and showed you the results. That was so much fun that I decided to try another monthly challenge.
Can you clicker-train your dog to do Arnold's trick and press its nose against a can of dogfood, and hold it there no matter WHAT? What tempting distractions can your dog learn to ignore, while earning the click? Send your photos, please!
The contest is open throughout April and May. Please email your entries to me at Karen [at] clickertraining [dot] com, with "Dog Food Contest" in the subject line, so you don't get lost in the company email. (contest is now over)
The winner and the prize will be announced by me at the end of the month.
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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