ClickerExpo Session Details 2014 - Bromley Cross, Lancashire

Welcome to ClickerExpo!
Karen Pryor, Aaron Clayton

Aaron Clayton and Karen Pryor welcome you to ClickerExpo with a preview of the program, opening remarks and introductions to help you navigate ClickerExpo successfully and enjoy your time to the fullest.

The Foundation Station Clicker Training 101
Cecilie Koste

Are you new to clicker training? Or, are you using clicker training but remain a bit confused by the terminology and the reasons behind what we do? Is your foundation truly solid?

Here's a crash course on clicker training, learning theory, and the laws governing how learning really works. You'll learn what you need to know about the underlying science in order to get out of the gate fast—or get back on track. If you start your ClickerExpo experience on Friday with this two-hour Session, you will have the foundation and vocabulary to help you understand, enjoy, and benefit from the rest of the program.

Norwegian presenter Cecilie Køste is co-founder of a chain of European clicker training schools that concentrate on developing top-flight competitors. A medical doctor currently working in child and youth psychiatry, Cecilie will help you understand why the principles work and what the terms really mean. Topics include: laws of learning, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, antecedents, behavior and consequences, types of consequences, extinction, the Premack Principle, cues and cues as reinforcers, and chaining.

Whether you are brand-new to clicker training or have been using the clicker but are not fully familiar with the science behind it, you will find this Session to be extremely worthwhile.

This is the first course in a series of foundational courses at ClickerExpo. The series is intended for new or less experienced clicker trainers. Look for the Foundation label on the schedule to find other courses intended for the same audience

Big and Tall, Round or Small? Modifier Cues & How to Teach Them
Ken Ramirez

• Big and Tall, Round or Small?: Modifier Cues In Action (Learning Lab)

At the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago where Ken Ramirez is vice president of Animal Collections and Animal Training, marine mammal trainers make use of modifier cues to indicate specific behaviors. Left and right are good examples that can be applied to objects (fetch the left object), actions (jump the left bar), body parts (give me your left flipper—or paw, if you're a sea otter). Modifiers need not be limited to two alternatives; cues can be developed that identify targets or objects as large, medium, and small.

In addition to marine mammals, Ken Ramirez has employed modifier cues with dogs, steering search and rescue dogs at a distance, for example. Ken will discuss and show on video training procedures for developing modifier cues with both marine mammals and dogs, and will suggest some of the many applications of this sophisticated tool.

The Special Sauce Hidden Cues & Prompts for Stunning Freestyle Routines
Michele Pouliot

Participant notes:
You are encouraged to bring one or more props to work with. The Lab will also have some props on hand that you may use. For participants, this is an Advanced Lab; Dog and Handler teams should have several (three or more) freestyle behaviors well established (reliably on cue). There is no Session prerequisite for this Lab. Observers at all levels of experience are welcome.

Routines that "wow" the audience and the judges—that's what you want! You have a solid basic routine and great music selected, but what will really impress your audience? What else do you need? First, props. Props can add "wow" to a routine and heighten audience enjoyment. Second, cues that are "hidden" in the choreography of the routine—discernible only to the savviest of onlookers—will give your routine the edge you’re looking for.

This Lab covers the use of props and hidden cues. Participants will learn how to select a prop that enhances the routine, train with it, and incorporate it into the routine creatively. Participants will then learn and practice the skill of "hiding" cued behaviors in the choreography—creating what freestylers call choreography cues.

Come and discover your own “special sauce” by working with freestyle champion Michele Pouliot.

You're in Great Shape Understanding & Applying Shaping
Eva Bertilsson, Emeilie Johnson-Vegh

• You're in Great Shape: Understanding & Applying Shaping In Action

Shaping behavior by reinforcing small steps toward a future goal is one of the core processes of clicker training, and is the key to creative and limitless training. It is often hard for trainers to make the shift from luring, prompting, or leading animals through the desired movements to letting animals discover what works on their own. The benefits of this shift are enormous to both trainer and animal.

Shaping builds the trainer’s observation and mechanical skills, and is the foundation of teaching complex behaviors. Shaping also makes training fun for the animal and strengthens the relationship between animal and trainer. Without an understanding of shaping, trainers will not experience the full power of clicker training.

Shaping depends on good observation and timely use of the clicker as a tool for communicating a movement as it is happening. In this Session, you will learn what shaping is—and isn’t—and how it differs from other ways of “getting behavior.” Eva and Emelie will demonstrate shaping techniques and discuss how to overcome common obstacles. If you’ve been frustrated in your attempts to try shaping, you’ll be inspired to try again.

This Session will include PowerPoint slides and videos.

Do You See What I See? The Benefits of Keen Behavioral Observation
Kay Laurence

“Be a good student of behavior” is one of Ken’s sayings. Scientist George Schaller says that to understand behavior you need “thousand-hour eyeballs.” Trainers can have 10,000-hour eyeballs and still never really see what an animal is experiencing.

The scientific position that naming emotions is “anthropomorphism” and, therefore, not accurate is now obsolete. Ethology has taught us that animals are designed to convey their internal states of affect by all kinds of movements and gestures, from hunched shoulders and raised hackles to relaxed body and happy, glowing eyes. Reading behavioral signals accurately requires giving up assumptions and paying attention without judgment.

Individual dogs differ; study your own dog. Can you recognize the tension lines in the sides of the face when stress levels get serious? How about respiration rate? Are you aware if your dog sighs? Do you notice that widening of the eye?

Clicker training demands that you develop exquisite observation skills so that you can anticipate when to click. This is a fascinating area of study that is likely to open your eyes wide. Kay will help you look at what you need to study and how.

Big and Tall, Round or Small? Modifier Cues & How to Teach Them in Action
Ken Ramirez

Prerequisite:

• Big and Tall, Round or Small: Modifier Cues and How to Teach Them (Learning Session)

Participant notes:
Dogs in this class should have a well-established retrieve and/or numerous clicker trained on-cue behaviors. Dog and handler should both be experienced and comfortable with freeshaping. You may participate with your dog or you may attend as an observer. Handlers must attend the prerequisite Learning Session in order to participate. Observers at all levels of experience are welcome. Observers should not bring dogs to the Lab.

Modifier cues are an advanced concept. Once you can get an animal to understand a couple of concepts—left and right, for example—and to understand the idea of a concept, you can move forward very fast. Dogs learn to generalize their knowledge, which is a huge advantage in advanced training.

This Learning Lab provides the opportunity to begin to practice what you learned in the Learning Session that is a prerequisite to this Lab. Participating dog/handler teams will practice with their own dogs the core techniques used in the Learning Session.

Hidden Aversives Drawbacks of Negative Reinforcement & Extinction
Karen Pryor

For thousands of years, people have been tending and using animals, driving and herding them, riding, leading, and steering them. The tools we use are worldwide and millennia-old: bits, bridles and reins, goads, prods, whips, collars, and leashes.

All of these tools are based on negative reinforcement—taking away something bad. I put pressure on the left rein and the horse discovers that by turning left, it can be rid of the discomfort. That’s reinforcing! Soon the left turn becomes automatic, and I can reduce the pressure to the lightest of warning touches and still get my left turn.

Join Ken for this fascinating and highly useful Session about how to deal with mistakes or unwanted responses from your animal in an effective and positive manner.

Once an animal has learned all the behaviors and all the cues for those behaviors, it can interact in reasonable comfort with the person controlling its behavior. However negative reinforcement—taking away a bad thing in order to increase a certain behavior—requires the ever-present possibility of the bad thing happening. The learner is more interested in avoiding discomfort than in learning something new. And rightly so! If the required behavior does not occur, the human in the equation is likely to respond by escalating the discomfort, sometimes to extreme levels.

Rather than equating negative and positive reinforcement as two sides of the same coin, Karen Pryor suggests that negative reinforcement creates a continuing underlying state of stress in the learner, and consequently has little place in modern training practice. In this Session, she will give examples of circumstances in which negative reinforcement can be valuable as an initial tactic when positive reinforcement is impossible, as when an animal is too fearful to approach.

If reinforcement maintains behavior, what about stopping an unwanted behavior simply by not reinforcing it any longer? Surely that’s a kind way to eliminate behavior? That process is called extinction—when reinforcement stops, the behavior that is being reinforced eventually stops, too. One problem with trying to use extinction to get rid of an unwanted behavior is that the reinforcers maintaining the behavior may be hard to eliminate. Sporadic reinforcement may maintain the behavior more strongly than ever. Furthermore, once learned, no behavior ever really disappears. You can hope you have extinguished the behavior to all reasonable extents and purposes; however such behavior may resurface, an event known as resurgence. Meanwhile, sudden cessation of reinforcement may escalate the behavior in what is called an extinction burst: the dog barks louder and longer than ever; the person trying to get a soda out of the broken Coke machine punches the buttons harder, puts more money in, swears, and may end up hitting or kicking the machine. Extinction is an intrinsically aversive experience, capable of triggering anger, aggression, and even despair.

In this Session, Karen will discuss how to recognize when you are accidentally triggering extinction bursts, as well as some reinforcement-based alternatives to the unnecessary cruelty of deliberately induced extinction.

Better, Faster, Smarter! Competition Training with Platforms
Michele Pouliot

• Better, Faster, Smarter In Action: Competition Training with Platforms

Most people think of their canine sport as highly specialized—the skills the dog needs to learn are highly specialized and the necessary training is also highly specialized. Actually, the opposite is true. Many canine sports require similar foundation skills. For example, specific positions around the handler and cued positions at distance are required in many dog sports. Training these foundation skills effectively prepares a dog for competing in your chosen sport, and supports your best shot at desired performance, titles, and championships.

In this Session, you will learn how raised platforms, used effectively, can help your dog master precision positioning and learn new behaviors very quickly. Platform training is practically indispensable when training your canine partner in distance work responses. This Session will cover the effective use of raised platforms and a variety of other methods that manage the physical environment to produce desired responses immediately during training sessions.

Join WCFO multi-international champion Michele Pouliot as she teaches the foundation training techniques that produce winning performances across sport boundaries.

Whether you compete in freestyle, obedience, agility, rally, or any number of canine sports, you’ll walk away with a new set of positive tools for your training that will help you train better, faster and smarter.

You're in Great Shape Understanding & Applying Shaping In Action
Eva Bertilsson, Emelie Johnson-Vegh

Prerequisite:

• You’re in Great Shape! Understanding and Applying Shaping (Learning Session)

Participant notes:
All Levels welcome. In this Learning Lab we will have approximately 15 dog/handler teams. Dogs should already understand the click/treat relationship and should be able to work in close quarters with other dogs. Handlers should be able to work independently to click and give reinforcers. You may participate with your dog or you may attend as an observer. To participate in any Lab, you are expected to attend the prerequisite Learning Session. Observers should not bring their dogs to the Lab.

This Learning Lab is designed for those new to shaping or uncertain about whether they're on the right track with their shaping skills, including people who have trained dogs primarily with lure/reward techniques but want to transition from luring to shaping.

In this Lab, you'll learn basic shaping skills, such as how to structure individual shaping sessions. This Lab will also explain how to choose criteria to ensure success and how to maintain a high rate of reinforcement. We will also work on improving observational skills. If needed, we will explore exercises for "loosening up" dogs that are used to waiting for guidance from their handler rather than offering behaviors.

Training exercises include: establishing routines for the training session, shaping a movement (such as head drop or back up), and shaping an interaction with an object (like a chair, a box, or a mat).

This Learning Lab provides the opportunity to practice what was learned in the Learning Session (a prerequisite to this Lab). Participating dog/handler teams will practice with their own dogs the core techniques used in the Learning Session.

Love it! Effective Non-Food Reinforcement
Ken Ramirez

• Love it!: Effective Non-Food Reinforcement In Action

Reinforcement is the key to successful training—most trainers already know that. Most experienced trainers reach a point where they find themselves using reinforcers other than food. Even beginning trainers will often use toys, praise, and other alternative reinforcers. This seemingly simple concept can be a valuable tool for the informed trainer—but it can also be the cause of serious problems and behavioral breakdown.

This Session will explore the science of conditioning new reinforcers, the practical use of variable reinforcement strategies, and a method for determining when use is as effective as it could be for your animal and situation.

In this Session, attendees will learn the science and practice behind various reinforcement strategies as well as systematic techniques for implementing new strategies so that they are successful. This Session will include a detailed explanation of the process and plenty of video examples.

Cues & Cueing
Kay Laurence

• Cues & Cueing:

For the learner, the real excitement in clicker training is not only the treat, but the opportunity to get you to click—power in the hands of your learner. This is a cue: an opportunity to earn reinforcement. Cues are not commands. A cue doesn’t make the behavior happen; it gives the animal information about how to get good things to happen. Your learner is seeking cues from the environment (that may be you), that tell the learner how to get you to click and provide more good things.

Understanding cues impacts your training significantly, no matter what your application may be. In this Session, Kay will discuss the nuts and bolts of building sound, clean cues from the very first behavior you teach. You will learn how to put a behavior on cue, how to single out the relevant cue from every other stimulus in the environment, and how to add a performance cue when the behavior is ready for prime time. Learn how to avoid careless and accidental movements that may confuse your animal or override your intended cue. Discover that cues can be powerful reinforcers in their own right, and learn how to make positive use of that fact instead of accidentally rewarding the very behaviors you are trying to avoid. Cues are just as important for good-quality pet training as they are for high-level competition training. Don’t be casual; be responsible with your cues!

This Session is followed by a Learning Lab about cueing to help bring the principles from concept to actual use in your hands. This Session is critical to setting a proper foundation for clicker training skills, but anyone working (or struggling!) with cues and cueing will benefit enormously from this Session.

Better, Faster, Smarter! Competition Training with Platforms In Action
Michele Pouliot

Prerequisite:

• Better, Faster, Smarter: Competition Training with Platforms (Learning Session)

Participant notes:
Handlers should be able to work their dog effectively in a distracting environment with other dogs nearby. To get the most out of this Learning Lab, handlers should already be familiar with using platforms. The dog should also be very familiar with and "magnetized" to platform use (dog automatically mounts an available platform).

Michele Pouliot is one of the most successful canine freestyle champions in the history of the sport, dazzling audiences and judges with her creative routines that are full of imaginative behaviors. Using raised platforms as a positive training tool has aided her in creating dozens of advanced routines consisting of 80 or more behavior cues, and in accomplishing three Obedience Trial Championships with three dogs.

No matter what your sport or performance needs, platform training can help you and your dog make training progress faster, and at the same time add some fun to the challenge of training precision.

In this Lab, you'll focus both on using platforms to train a new complex behavior and on using platforms to improve upon an existing advanced behavior. The skills that you'll be practicing include making the most powerful use of a platform by planning your goal behavior, keeping the fun in training sessions while making notable progress, and assessing how to modify platform use during a training session.

This Learning Lab provides the opportunity to practice what you learned in the Learning Session that is a prerequisite to this Lab. Participating dog/handler teams will practice with their own dogs the core techniques used in the Learning Session. As explained in the Participant Notes, participating dog/handler teams should already be familiar with using platforms.

Use platforms and you'll find that you will soon begin developing your own ways of speeding up training with this versatile tool!

We are the Ch-ampions Obedience Skills in Competition
Cecilie Koste

Clicker training is THE way to train a high-scoring obedience competition dog. Done right, clicker training develops a canine partner that performs just as well in competition as in training. Join Norwegian presenter Cecilie Køste, co-founder of a chain of European clicker training schools that concentrate on developing top-flight competitors, as she shows you how to apply the clicker training you know in innovative ways to achieve extraordinary results.

In this Session, you'll gain new and exciting insights into how clicker training can make obedience training easier and increase your precision and reliability. Using revealing and instructive video, you will learn how to break advanced exercises down into manageable units, to identify the basic skills needed in the obedience exercises, and to walk away with the essentials for training those skills.

People at all levels of obedience competition will benefit enormously from this Session, but the Session will be aimed at those with a solid grasp of clicker training principles and techniques and solid experience in competition obedience.

Pace, Place & More Strategic Reinforcement Delievery
Michele Pouliot

Effective clicker training is sometimes thought of as exclusively depending on the timing of the click and the value of the reinforcer. An often-overlooked subject is reward delivery. How, where, and when rewards are delivered is crucial to efficient and clear training because it is a key linchpin in the communication cycle you are creating. Implicit in "Click, then treat" is all of the activity that happens in "then." For example, while most beginners know that starting to reach into the bait bag before the click is completed can weaken the power in the click, even experienced trainers don't always understand other critical effects of reward delivery on learning.

Strategic reward delivery includes how reward delivery can be used to either lower or increase a dog's energy, how the makeup of the physical reward itself can enhance or hinder the reward process, whether the placement of reinforcement should support the goal behavior or be used to reset the dog for another repetition, and how teaching a dog to tolerate occasional longer reward sequences can allow for flexibility without dampening the reinforcement process. Finally, strategic reward delivery means being conscious of the choices you are making and how they impact your dog's learning.

This is a PowerPoint presentation with video demonstrations and examples.

Cues & Cueing In Action
Kay Laurence

Prerequisite:

• Cues and Cueing(Learning Session)

Participant notes:
Dogs should already understand the click/treat relationship, be comfortable with normal handling, and able to work in close quarters with other dogs. Handlers should have some experience with shaping. You may participate with your dog or you may attend as an observer. Observers should not bring their dogs to the Lab. To participate in this Lab, you are expected to attend the prerequisite Learning Session Cues and Cueing.

In this Lab, Kay Laurence will demonstrate and share the principles involved in building clear cues. Exercises will include self observation and examining what the dog selects as the relevant cue. What is the dog really attending to—the wiggle of the eyebrows or the sound from your mouth?

Learn how to build a consistent cue and consistent response. Learning to deliver with reliability will build reliability in response. The more competent we are in these essential communication skills, the higher the chance of success for our dogs. This course is critical to setting a proper foundation for clicker training skills. Trainers who are already experienced with cueing also benefit enormously from practicing these skills from the ground up again.

Reward Ends, Then what?
Eva Bertilsson, Emelie Johnson-Vegh

A desired behavior is followed by reinforcers, which strengthen the behavior in the future. That's the bottom line of positive reinforcement training. But does it matter what happens immediately after each reward? You betcha. What happens right after the reward is a neglected part of the training loop that deserves more focus. Whether we intend it to or not, the end of the reward functions as a cue for some behavior. The behavior that regularly appears and is reinforced after a reward ends will be under stimulus control of that reward ending. By being aware of this process, a desired behavior can be promoted and other undesired behaviors nipped in the bud before they are built into the training experience.

This Session will discuss rewards both as consequences and as antecedents. Attendees will learn how to predict and develop specific behavior so that what happens after each reward is beneficial for future training. Examples and video demonstrations will be included.

Hold It,Get It,Bring It, Give It The Multi-Purpose Clicked Retrieve
Michele Pouliot

• Hold It,Get It,Bring It, Give It: The Multi-Purpose Clicked Retrieve In Action

The “retrieve” behavior is impressive to watch and useful to train. But training even a basic retrieve can be very challenging for a number of dogs and their trainers. Many trainers can teach a basic retrieve, but are challenged developing a solid delivery to hand or other target. On top of that, some trainers still insist that a clicker trained retrieve is not reliable.

This Session challenges that belief. Michele Pouliot will demonstrate the advantages of the clicker trained retrieve, provide the steps to move forward with your dog, and offer tools to use to move forward with other animals. You’ll see how the clicker trained retrieve becomes a highly useful, flexible skill in your dog’s repertoire. Whether your retrieve goals are for competitive obedience, for service dog work, or just for fun, this Session is for you.

In this Session, attendees will learn:

• Two different approaches to clicker training a retrieve that allow for options with dogs of varying temperaments
• How to increase a dog’s desire to retrieve (even a dog that has no natural inclination to retrieve)
• Detailed steps for training an effective retrieve that has duration-hold behavior
• Handler timing and location for presenting the article to be retrieved

This Session will include video demonstrations of all steps, video of challenging responses during the training process, and even video of horses retrieving. You’ll learn each step in creating a happy and reliable retrieve.

Prior to 2001, Michele used traditional methods to train the retrieve, personally training more than 350 guide dogs and several pets to retrieve via traditional methods, including three Obedience Trial Champions. In 2001, Michele trained her first clicker retrieve and never looked back. After training five horses to retrieve, she realized just how reliable a clicker retrieve could be. Michele’s clicker retrieve training has been applied successfully to guide dogs, service dogs, and dozens of dogs in the competitive sports of canine freestyle and competitive obedience.

Love it! Effective Non-Food Reinforcement In Action
Ken Ramirez

Prerequisite:

• Love It: Effective Non-Food Reinforcement (Learning Session)

Participant notes:
All participating dogs should be clicker-savvy, have a robust behavioral repertoire, and already use toys or play as a reinforcer regularly and effectively. While Lab participation may be appropriate for less experienced trainers, it is not recommended for novice clicker trainers as the exercises can be complex. Handlers must attend the prerequisite Learning Session in order to participate. Observers at all levels of experience are welcome. Observers should not bring dogs to the Lab.

The effective use of non-food reinforcers is a critical skill that all trainers will likely use or need at some point in their training careers. Being able to use non-food reinforcers is extremely useful, but requires an understanding of their role in training as well as a well-thought-out training approach. This stand-alone Lab focuses on two main practical aspects of using non-food reinforcers: how novel stimuli, like clapping and verbal praise, become reinforcers, and how to maximize the use of play and toys.

Dog/handler teams will have the opportunity to start training novel stimuli as reinforcers and gain valuable insight from Ken as to how to maintain the strength of these unique reinforcers. In the latter half of the Lab, the focus will be on using play and toys as reinforcers — demonstrating their use with participating dogs as well as maintaining and evaluating their effectiveness.

This Learning Lab provides the opportunity to begin to practice what was learned in the Learning Session (a prerequisite to this Lab). Participating dog/handler teams will practice with their own dogs the core techniques used in the Learning Session. Observers and dog/handler teams will all receive valuable tips and strategies for making non-food reinforcers more effective. The Lab will include a step-by-step demonstration of how to teach new reinforcers to an animal.

Join Ken Ramirez for this important Lab. You'll "Love It!"

Room With a View Point A Moderated Panel Discussion With Faculty

Join some of your favorite ClickerExpo stars as they argue, banter, and reveal their own opinions and experiences about issues in the forefront of the training world today. When they relax and say what they think, these folks are both insightful and funny! This get-together is a "don't miss it" event that brings people back to ClickerExpo year after year.

Friendly Takeover: The Growing Influence of All of Us
Karen Pryor

People often proclaim that clicker trainers are changing the world of dog training, and indeed we see new evidence of that fact every day. Judging by the number of new books, DVDs, and YouTube videos, the clicker community is also changing the world of horses, cats, zoo animals, and even fish. Do you realize that we are changing a lot more than that? Every time you help a pet owner catch on to the concepts, every time you share a clicker story with your neighbor, your veterinarian, or your in-laws, and every time you put a clicker video on your Facebook page—you are widening the circle of awareness. The outcome? More and more people who don’t work with animals at all are reaching out to us for help.

In her special Saturday night talk, Karen Pryor will share some of the current projects and personalities she is working with, including: a conductor who wants to make rehearsals more efficient and music education less punitive, doctors bringing shaping and reinforcement (instead of yelling) into the training of interns and residents in hospitals, psychiatrists using our tools to manage extremely challenging mental disorders, and a clicker-savvy mom making life more bearable for the parents of children with autism. Our wonderful technology is going viral at last! What is making that happen is you.

Let's Make Some Noise! Techniques to Build Your Dog's Confidence
Eva Bertilsson, Emelie Johnson-Vegh

Learn how to increase your dog’s confidence and his ability to function in all kinds of situations that involve noise and movement. Dogs are subjected to a great many things that make noise and/or move. When your dog comes to understand these factors as good news, rather than as scary or distracting, your dog’s life becomes less stressful—and tremendous learning opportunities open up for both of you. When noise and movement are welcome, even initiated, your dog has the foundation for skills that are crucial in competition training. Enable your dog to perform at his peak by offering the chance to learn these skills.

Eva and Emelie are top agility instructors in Scandinavia and the authors of the ground-breaking book Agility Right from the Start. They developed this training approach to noise and movement for the agility dog that needs to happily take on loud noises and different movements in his environment while training and competing, or while negotiating various obstacles. But this training is invaluable for all dogs—competition dogs and pets alike. Being able to not just tolerate but enjoy, and to some extent control, noise and movement is a life skill all dogs in today’s society should have. This topic is one of Karen Pryor’s favorite sections of Agility Right from the Start.

In this Session, Eva and Emelie will demonstrate, among other things, how to teach your dog to like noise and movement, how to teach your dog that he can create noise and movement on his own, and how to teach your dog to work for noise and movement! This Session is also an excellent opportunity for trainers to see great examples of the transition from classical to operant conditioning.

Come join Eva and Emelie and experience joyful noise.

Training Thoughtfully
Kay Laurence

In this Session Kay will replace myths and superstitions with the underlying ethics, philosophy, and principles of modern training. Thoughtful training benefits every animal you interact with, whether you are breeding, competing at the highest level, house-training a new pup, or helping your elderly dog get in the car. We will examine the core of your beliefs, and how those beliefs affect your interaction, communication, planning what you teach, and the application and maintenance of long-term behavior. The height of thoughtful training is learning how to stay with your ethics when surrounded by differing opinions. Learn to respect your own lifetime contract with your dog, instead of responding to the opinion of passing strangers. Kay will present some very logical processes that will enable you to journey "with new eyes."

Doggie Zen The Way to Self-Control
Cecilie Koste

Participant notes:
To participate in this Lab, dogs must be able to offer simple behaviors. Handlers should already have experience observing, capturing, and shaping behavior, as well as be agile enough to put down a bowl and pick it up again quickly. If not, we recommend that handlers enlist an observer or friend to help with bowl placement and removal.

Join Scandinavian trainer Cecilie Køste as she leads you and your dog down the path of canine enlightenment! The Western interpretation of the meaning of Zen corresponds to practices that lead to spiritual awakening and inner peace. Achieving "Doggie Zen" naturally refers to your dog's ability to demonstrate calm, patient behavior even in the face of the most tempting of temptations!

In this Lab, you will learn and practice the principles of Doggie Zen. The unifying principle of Doggie Zen is to use positive reinforcement to teach the dog impulse control. In particular, the goal is for your dog to learn the concept of delayed gratification — giving up what he wants now to get it later. Hands-on exercises will help you and your dog progress towards this goal. You'll also refine your shaping skills and practice setting appropriate criteria.

Join Cecelie and see how "Doggie Zen" can improve your regular training, competition performance, and everyday life. May you both reach enlightenment during the Lab!

Oops! What to Do When Mistakes Happen
Ken Ramirez

Your dog makes an error; he doesn’t do what you expected. How should you respond? Positive reinforcement trainers will go out of their way to avoid punishment. However, is a well-timed “no” still considered a punisher? How about a kindly trained “oops” to let the dog know he should change his behavior? What options are available to the well-intentioned positive reinforcement trainer?

In this Session, Ken Ramirez will present the various techniques used to deal with incorrect responses and share the science and practical applications for each tool. These may include time-outs, no-reward markers, delta signals, least-reinforcing stimulus, and others. Ken will explore the varied applications of redirection and share his preferred approach to get an animal back on the desired path.

Join Ken for this fascinating and highly useful Session about how to deal with mistakes or unwanted responses from your animal in an effective and positive manner.

Hooking Up! Chaining Behaviors
Cecilie Koste

A behavior chain is an event in which two or more behaviors occur in sequence, linked together by cues. If you are training in competition or in any high-performance setting, understanding chaining is essential. Many types of competition and performance work are based on and trained with a deep use of behavior chains, including service work, search and rescue, agility, obedience, tracking, freestyle, and field trials, to name a few. Simple chains can develop accidentally in daily life as well, often leading to unwanted behavior.

Behavior chains can vary from simple two-step chains linked closely in time to complex chains of multiple behaviors with long duration, such as in search and rescue work. A well-executed chain is a thrill to watch as the animal performs a multipart skill without introducing errors or correction.

While there are many concepts to grasp in chaining behaviors, a foundation concept is the role of cues.

Attendees in this Session should already have a solid understanding of cues and cueing.

Join Cecilie Køste for a complete grounding in chaining. Through extensive video examples, Cecilie will cover chaining in-depth including:

• The vital role of cues in chaining and creating a "continuous behavior"
• Why and how cues become the information equivalent of a click — a conditioned reinforcer
• The process of linking multiple behaviors together with cues
• Adjusting for fixed sequence (A–B-C) vs. variable sequence (C-B-A or B-C-A) challenges
• The key role of back-chaining in building reliable chains more quickly
• How to avoid building accidental chains
• Why chains "break" and what to do about it

When you understand chains — how to build and repair them, how to interrupt them, and how to avoid breaking them by accident — you have an essential and powerful training toolkit in your repertoire. You many never think of building any set of behaviors quite the same way again — and that's exactly right.

Hold It, Get It, Bring It, Give It! The Multi-Purpose Clicked Retrieve In Action
Michele Pouliot

Prerequisite(s):

• Hold It, Get It, Bring It, Give It!: The Multi-Purpose Clicked Retrieve (Learning Session)

Participant notes:
This Lab will cover the steps for training a reliable retrieve via clicker training. This is an Advanced Level Lab for handlers, but suitable for dogs at any level of retrieve training, even dogs that have negative responses to seeing the retrieve article. Beginning dogs in retrieve through advanced dogs in retrieve are welcome. The handler must attend the prerequisite Session. Observers at all levels of experience are also welcome.

Mandatory skills and equipment for dog/handler teams are:

• Handler should bring rewards the dog is already very enthusiastic about.
• Dogs should be comfortable in a seminar environment, and able to focus on working with dogs nearby.
• Dog should be clicker-savvy. For example, dogs should be able to offer behavior for the handler and should be completely comfortable learning behaviors (not necessarily retrieve-related) and cues via the clicker training process.
• Handlers should bring the article they will be using for retrieve training. The article should be a training dumbbell or other article that has a circumference easy for the individual dog to place its mouth over and around.

You may participate with your dog or you may attend as an observer. Observers should not bring their dogs to the Lab.

Join Michele Pouliot and practice training the retrieve clicker-style. Building on the knowledge gained from her related Session, Michele will help you get started if you are just beginning retrieve training, get back on track if your retrieve training has gone off-course, or hone your technique and build on what you already know.

This Learning Lab provides the opportunity to practice what you learned in the Learning Session (a prerequisite to this Lab). Participating dog/handler teams will practice with their own dogs the core techniques used in the Learning Session.

In this Lab, participants will learn and practice the following: the steps in clicker training a retrieve, modifying clicker retrieve training for a less-than-enthusiastic retriever, technical skills for the handler in training the retrieve, reward placement, attaining goal behavior, adjusting retrieve-training techniques for the individual dog, effective timing of the click and the handling of rewards, and the role of classical conditioning in retrieve training.

Specific exercises to help teach these concepts will include:

• Training duration hold behavior
• Training mouth on the article
• Training pick up of article from the ground
• Training delivery to hand or other target

Prior to 2001, Michele used traditional methods to train the retrieve, personally training more than 350 guide dogs and several pets to retrieve via traditional methods, including three Obedience Trial Champions. In 2001, Michele trained her first clicker retrieve and never looked back. After training five horses to retrieve, she realized just how reliable a clicker retrieve could be. Michele’s clicker retrieve training has been applied successfully to guide dogs, service dogs, and dozens of dogs in the competitive sports of canine freestyle and competitive obedience.

Agility Right from the Start
Eva Bertilsson, Emilie Johnson-Vegh

This Session is about agility right from the start! Foundation skills form the core of agility, and are valuable not only in the beginning of training but throughout your career. Agility is a complex sport, and fun and successful training comes from building the needed skills bit by bit. In this Session, you’ll learn both what to train and how to train it!

Attendees will learn the basics of clever clicker training for agility using Eva and Emelie’s two favorite strategies to get behavior: “aim for it” and “race to reward.” Attendees will also learn trainer and handler skills, reward requirements, transports, and useful foundation skills, such as going between/over/under. These skills are important for trainers to know; both you and your dog will have more fun and be more successful when you get things right from very beginning. Teaching yourself and your dog strong foundation skills sets the stage for success and lays the base for fast, independent, and reliable obstacle performance. Through this training approach, proper handling (your body-language cues) is also built in right from the start, establishing good habits for you and your dog. In short, this Session will cover everything you need to know about agility training!

Eva and Emelie are top agility instructors in Scandinavia and are the authors of the important book Agility Right from the Start. Eva and Emelie’s vivid lecture style is accompanied by lots of examples and demonstrations on stage and on video. While this Session focuses on agility, the principles and ideas presented are valuable to all trainers who compete in canine sports. Since the ideas presented are novel, even the most experienced agility competitor will find the information valuable.

Aggression Treatment & Context
Ken Ramirez

Dealing with reactive dogs, handling aggression, and working through problems with highly sensitive animals can be a challenge for even the very best clicker trainers.

Over the years, many creative trainers have presented various alternatives to handling aggression and reactivity problems. The explosion in the number of approaches, combined with an array of new nomenclature, is often confusing for trainers seeking to choose an approach for themselves or to recommend to others.

Today, some of the most discussed approaches include, but are not limited to, Counter Conditioning, Constructional Aggression Treatment (CAT), Click to Calm, Behavioral Adjustment Training (BAT), the “Look at That” game (LAT), and a host of others. How do these varied treatment approaches compare? What common or distinct scientific principles are being employed? Are certain plans better for certain situations than others?

This Session is designed to help you sort out the choices. It will explore the science underlying the approaches, look at their known efficacy, and help you see what these approaches share, as well as their differences, so that you can make informed choices. Attendees of this Session will also learn to ask the right questions and listen/look for thoughtful answers in order to be prepared when the next approach makes its way forward.

Join Ken Ramirez for a Session that is important and informative for anyone involved with aggression treatment in animals.

The Joy of Training
Kay Laurence

Participant notes:
Dogs should already understand the click/treat relationship, be comfortable with normal handling, and be able to work in close quarters with other dogs. Handlers should have some experience with shaping and establishing cues. You may participate with your dog or you may attend as an observer. Observers should not bring dogs to the Lab.

Why does clicker training have such a joyous impact on learning? How does puzzle-solving become a joy in itself? This Learning Lab will help you to set up your training to build your dog’s personal sense of enjoyment through achievement—and yours, too! You will learn how to set up both your learner and yourself for success.

Exercises in thoughtful training can happen even at the simplest level, such as targeting, finding locations, interacting with objects, or creating body awareness. We practice fine slicing, taking very small steps forward to make the learning actually progress faster, while avoiding confusion and frustration that diminishes the learning experience. While the experience level for this Lab is rated Intermediate, it would be exciting and useful for advanced trainers and competition dogs as well.

On Creativity
Karen Pryor

Karen Pryor’s classic paper from 1969, The creative porpoise: training for novel behavior, opened up a new approach to the concept of animals and creativity. The paper has been cited in other research literature more than 200 times. Nevertheless, the fact that variable behavior and innovation can be learned and taught to multiple species is only now being widely recognized. The concept that innovative behavior can be established as an operant criterion is still contested in the behavior analytical literature.

Meanwhile, modern training has made teaching creativity a working tool for improving confidence, expanding learning skills, and enriching daily experience for animals and people alike. At the same time, innovative behavior in the wild has become a new and growing field of interest in biology. Researchers have observed and recorded novel behavior, such as new foraging techniques in many species, behavior that often arises in a single individual whose new skill has spread to conspecifics. Primates and birds dominate the literature, but examples have been demonstrated, both observationally and by experiment, in many other species, even guppies.

In this Session, Karen will discuss creative animals she has known, from dolphins, whales, gorillas, and polar bears to dogs and horses and, of course, rats and pigeons. Karen Pryor and Ken Ramirez have described the protocol for establishing novel behavior in their chapter, Modern Training, in a new textbook on operant and classical conditioning. Karen will review these simple but powerful steps that may help you establish innovative thinking and novel actions in any species of learner, including yourself.