Judy L, a Karen Pryor Academy graduate, e-mailed me the story below. In some respects, it's not surprising but it's the first time I've heard of this level of misrepresentation. Likely it's happening more than I'd care to believe though. On the bright side, going to the trouble of misrepresetation is a sign of our success in reaching people!
August 2009
"I was at a Starbucks a couple weeks ago, and there was a lady with a young mixed breed, very hairy, dog sitting outside having a coffee. Of course I struck up a conversation with her about her dog. She was mentioning some issues she was having with the puppy and I said "Your dog would do great with clicker training." With that she picked up a shock collar controller from her lap and told me that she is clicker training her dog. My first response was, "that is not a clicker." She answered "why yes it is." After several minutes of talking with her about her training program, she told me the trainer she is using told her this 'controller' is also known as a clicker. After a few more minutes of conversation I convinced her that the controller she had was not a clicker. We had a lovely conversation about training, and she was quite disturbed that she was misinformed about the clicker. She has signed up for one of my classes and immediately took the shock collar off her dog."
PS Judy updates that the pet owner is now a regular client, much happier and much relieved! (To say nothing about how her dog must feel!)
electric clicker
Unfortunately, this is not a unique event. I realized when I married into a family which referred to all remote controls as "clickers" that there was a potential slang issue, but it was about eight or nine years ago that I mentioned clicker training to a man who proceeded to tell me the most hair-raising stories...! and I realized that we had a more serious representation problem.
Now I am very careful to drop several qualifiers into my first mention of clicker training, such as "positive reinforcement" and "the clicking sound" and maybe a joke about "no batteries required" to avoid such misunderstandings. I would hate to spend a long time espousing clicker training and have the result be to send someone to purchase an electric collar!
Laura &
Yikes!
There is a difference between someone who trains with a clicker and a clicker trainer. I do know traditional trainers who use both aversives and clickers in their work, but do not consider them clicker trainers.
As clicker training becomes increasingly popular, I think we will see more traditional training professionals adopting and exploiting the popular interest in positive training/clicker training and including it in their advertising to get clients in the door.
As for the term reward-based training, I've heard it used by many, many "balanced" or "traditional" trainers; particularly those who argue that rewards are fine or even necessary for training a behavior but aversives should be only used once the dog "knows" the behavior to proof it. The training is "reward-based," the proofing is not. Also, if you're considering a reward as being synonymous with a reinforcer, isn't using an ear pinch to teach a retrieve "reward-based training" (negative reinforcement is still reinforcement)?
The political semantics and advertising buzzwords of the industry can be overwhelming (often the shock delivered by a shock collar is referred to as a "tap" or "tickle" by its proponents). I'll stick with calling myself a clicker trainer and do my best to show my clients exactly what real clicker training is.
Great job, Judy; for helping this new client on her way to a happier, better behaved canine friend.
Casey Lomonaco, KPA CTP, APDT
Rewarding Behaviors Dog
Training
Binghamton, New York
www.rewardingbehaviors.com
AWFUL!!
This is one of the reasons I don't say I'm a clicker trainer, but instead say I use reward-based training. I'm so glad that dog's owner found the graduate! But I feel very sorry for the rest of the dogs learning from that charlatin. Can you imagine one of his students reading an article about clicker traiing and shocking their dog instead of clicking! Shock- here's a cookie. "Why is my dog not learning?" Grrr