Trainers often like to say that dogs aren't robots, and so in this season when some lucky person might actually be getting a puppy for Christmas, and for all those who already have dogs members of the family, to think about what dogs really are, and to think about that essential element of clicker training, which is forgiveness.
Clicker training is reinforcement based, and so when I talk to other trainers, or do some of my endless research on prey drive and methods of training dogs to control their prey drive emotion, some trainers are bound to ask, what do you do if the dog just won't cooperate? What do you do when the dog says no? Or as one very interesting proponent of e-collars wrote, there is nothing more annoying than a dog who won't quit playing.
I actually respect that trainer, and I do have very playful dogs. And so what do I do? I've taken out the roast beef and I've got my clicker and a deer goes bounding out of the woods, but my dog doesn't care a flea's eyelash about my clicker and roast beef.
So some trainers suggest, get an electric collar on there, give the minimum vibration to interrupt the behavior. I don't know much about that, but I have had some success interrupting a deer blast-off by blowing my plastic marine whistle.
But the problem with those kinds of an "interruption-based" training plans -- and this is the reason I wrongly excuse myself from always carrying a marine whistle -- is that animals become increasingly immune to aversive stimuli. Using a shock or jolt or light strangle or loud blast or whatever it is that people use to interrupt behaviors should be last resort only, because animals get used to punishment. They learn to tolerate it, like bacteria develops tolerance to antibiotics. Our increasing tolerance for punishment is a Darwinian adaptation that allows us to cope with arthritis, traffic, aging. It hurts, but thankfully we get used to it. So it is far far better, to prevent undesirable behavior from happening in the first place, because because overtime it becomes increasingly difficult to interrupt .
SO, the dog is running after a deer because I didn't have her at least on a long line. I messed up, my dog messed up, what do I do?
The nice thing about clicker training is that it is a very forgiving method. While we get very fast initial results, anything good takes time and refinement. Just as we naturally expect our children to develop more self-control as they mature, that's the same thing that happens with dogs. My two year-old dog still needs her off-leash training wheels.So I put the dog back on the long line and confine off-leash walks to lower-level stimuli, like along the ocean, or in fenced-in areas, where she is successfully able to demonstrate self-control now around all those distractions. I keep ball and frisbee at the ready, to keep her engaged and attentitive. A goof up, as long as everyone survives, isn't the end of the world. Tigerlily has nice duration behaviors, but Dandylion keeps popping out of his down. We just come up with a training plan, and work on it. No one has to be shocked or choked or smacked. Mistakes are part of the learning process. It's all good.
We're all animals. We're not robots. You'll think I'm nuts for writing this, but I think our dogs see us as their spiritual leaders. We teach animals how to get along, not fight, not to kill, to tolerate others. The most successful trainers are teaching dogs how to love life, how to love the world. We teach them the difference between right and wrong. Dogs certainly are moral creatures, we do instill some sense of morals, different than a human moral sense certainly, but a well educated mature dog knows not to kill, to avoid harming another dog or human at least. And when my young dog makes a mistake (pulls Dandylion's ear! or takes off after a deer), she has been trained well enough that she definitely knows she has done *something* wrong, even though she might not know what.
So, as the dogs'"spiritual leader" I try to be fair and but forgiving. They are still learning! When mistakes happen, take away the game (sometimes I worry that God might do that to us one of hese days! haha). The spiritual leader might call for a time to rest. I like to give my release cue, "okay" to let the dog know that any ignored cued opportunity is over and closed for now.
Yesterday, each dog went through a silly playful time, telling me, "NO! YOU come over here and play with THIS game!" They were trying to lead the training session, being very playful. So I cued "okay" and it took up a few minutes, but I let them be clowns. A little grace, a little forgiveness, a little leeway to be clowns -- tis always the season for that!
