Stale Cheerios

Bob Bailey and Animal Training

Mary Hunter — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:33:57 +0000

I’m nearing the end of a series of posts on the 2010 Art and Science of Animal Training Conference. This post is some of my thoughts on the presentation by the second speaker, and one of my favorites, Bob Bailey. Bob Bailey is well known through out the dog training world for his infamous chicken camps–in which he uses chickens to teach trainers the mechanics, timing and finer points of training. Chickens move fast–so you have to click at EXACTLY the right time!

Bob Bailey is more than just a chicken trainer, though. He was Director of Training of the Navy’s Marine Mammal Program in the early 1960s and later partnered with Marian Breland to run Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE), after the death of Keller Breland. ABE was an anomaly in the 1950s and 1960s, using operant conditioning and positive methods to train a wide range of species for animal shows, TV commercials, the government, and even travelling salesmen.

Much of the first part of Bob Bailey’s talk was about the history of animal training and clicker training. I find this subject fascinating–in part because there are so many misconceptions about the history of training. My favorite (and one that I hear most often) is that clicker training was developed by dolphin trainers. Not true.

The principles of operant conditioning originated out of lab work done by B.F. Skinner in the 1930s with rats and pigeons. He was aided by graduate students, including Marian Breland and Keller Breland. The Brelands realized the potential of applying what they had learned in the lab to commercial animal training.

Most training in the 50s and 60s was pretty aversive. Punishment, negative reinforcement, the do it or else! style of training. Even dolphin training in the 60s was largely based on punishment and aversives. (Hmm. There goes the myth that clicker training was developed for dolphins because dolphins can’t be trained with punishment!)

The Brelands produced and marketed a dog training kit in the mid-50s, the Master Mind Dog Training Kit. The kit was based on positive reinforcement and included instructions and a clicker. It failed miserably. The dog training community just wasn’t ready for positive training.

Many people think of clicker training with dogs and horses as a “new” phenomenon. And on the larger scale, it is. Clicker training didn’t really catch on with the broader community until after the publication of Karen Pryor’s Don’t Shoot the Dog in the 1980s.

However, what continually gets me is that much of the work Bob Bailey and the Brelands were doing in the 1960s far surpasses much of the training I see around me today. Bird shows and dolphin shows, trained chickens, pigs and cows for travelling feed salesmen, birds and dogs for government work, the odd rabbit, raccoon, ferret or pony for a TV commercial or animal show, they trained them all.

They understood how to get behavior and the science behind what they were doing. They also did a lot of training, with a lot of different species, in a lot of different conditions. That’s a lot of a lots! But, there’s something to be learned from this. Lots and lots of practice, as well as a willingness to experiment and try new things is what will make each of us a better trainer. Animal training is much more a learned skill than a natural talent. This also ties back to the concept of broadening, which Dr. Robert Epstein talked about. By trying and learning new things, we can expand our potential and creativity as trainers.

Bob Bailey’s talk also included a great discussion on reinforcers, but I’ll save my thoughts on that for a later post. I’ll leave you with a lovely video from one of Bob Bailey’s students at a chicken camp. The chicken is trained to go in circles around red cones and figure eights around yellow cones. It’s an interesting discrimination problem where the objects themselves serve as cues for the two different behaviors.

Watch this clip on youtube.

If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy the rest of my notes from the 2010 Art and Science of Animal Training Conference or my notes from the 2009 conference. Better yet, bookmark the ORCA website and come to the 2011 conference next spring! Sign up for e-mail updates to make sure you don’t miss any of the great posts from stalecheerios.com.

Playful Horses and Upcoming Posts

Mary Hunter — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 13:35:35 +0000

I’ll be finishing up my posts from the ORCA Art and Science of Animal Training Conference this week. (About time!, you’re probably saying.) Figure I need to get them wrapped up, as I’ll be attending ClickerExpo in Lexington in about 2 weeks and, well, I should have plenty to write about that!

The weather here has been getting warmer. The days are getting longer and the horses are starting to shed out their winter coats. Today is rainy, but yesterday was lovely 60s and it should be high 60s and low 70s all this week. Perfect weather for getting outside!

We opened up the gates between the two back pastures at the rescue on Friday, which led to much running, bucking and galloping around. The horses are feeling playful, they enjoy this warmer weather too!

Yesterday we moved our two weanlings, Tilde and Moody, and one of the yearlings, Doolittle, from one of the front pastures to the back pasture. They had been with the old timers, now they’re with most of the other young horses. It will be good for them to have more horses their age to interact with. (They are the three in the photo above.)

As usual, though, whenever you mix horses there is always a bit of chasing and running around. The older horses and top horses in the pecking order have to make sure the younger ones know who’s in charge.

If you’re introducing a horse to a new herd it can helpful (if possible) to introduce two new horses together. That way, they have a buddy they can hang out with while they assimilate into the herd. We’ve been moving horses back and forth between two properties all winter. Whenever we move them, we do it two at a time. It’s nice for the horse to have a familiar face while they adjust to the new herd.

Clicker Carnival #6 (March 2010)

Mary Hunter — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:26:17 +0000

Welcome to the March edition of the Clicker Carnival! Below you’ll find some great blog articles on animal training from the past month from around the web.

This edition’s a little late–the weather has been gorgeous in Texas and I’ve been outside playing with the ponies rather than tending to the blog. The horses are enjoying the weather too–such as Cricket (pictured above) sleeping in the sun.

Enjoy these articles and enjoy the coming month as the weather warms up. I wish you beautiful spring weather, whatever you are, and plenty of time outside with your animals.

Barrie presents Jellybean is a Whiz posted at Fun with Dogs. Jelly Bean is learning a few new tricks! Check them out, along with some video footage, over at Barrie’s blog.

Diana L Guerrero presents Animal Training is Like Piano Playing posted at Ark Animal Answers. Check out Ark Animals to find out how animal training is like piano playing. You might be surprised at some of the similarities!

Caitlyn presents Charging the Clicker and Targeting posted at Beebee’s Chrome Chevalier. I love stories of animals learning about clicker training. Chrome’s a smarty and caught onto clicker training in his first session.

Eileen Murphy presents Using a Muzzle posted at Companions Training Blog. Should you train your dog to wear a muzzle? You might be surprised at the answer!

Molly presents Poisoned Cues and Natural Horsemanship posted at Golden the Pony Girl. Poisoned cues can slow down our training–and often we don’t even realize they’re there! The post is a great introduction to the subject of poisoned cues.

Anne presents Prepare for the Worst posted at Pet Central. “Bad” behavior is usually just normal dog behavior! However, there are lots of ways to make dog behavior more acceptable to our human world.

Debbie presents Taking an Intermediate Dog Back to Beginners posted on her dog training blog. This is a great training story about what to do when an animal isn’t getting what you’re trying to train.

Emma presents Trick Wise posted at Star’s Blog. Star is working on a few cool new tricks. This post also has a great discussion about why trick training is awesome for horses. (The dog people who read the carnival might not realize this, but many traditional horse people are very opposed to teaching horses “tricks.”)

I attended the 2010 Art and Science of Animal Training Conference at UNT last month. The conference was awesome and I have been (slowly) posting my notes online. If you missed them, you can check them out here.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of the clicker carnival. Join us next month for even more articles about positive training. To find out how to submit articles to the carnival as well as to check out the archives of past issues, check out this page.

Riding Rosie for the first time

Mary Hunter — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 12:44:32 +0000

I rode Rosie for the first time on Saturday, and she did excellently! Rosie is a mare who I did quite a bit of groundwork with last year, such as desensitization to bareback pads and a big green ball. She’s a smart mare and a quick learner. Rosie was in a foster home for a couple of months at the end of last year and her foster dad put a handful of first rides on her. However, she’s still incredibly green broke and it’s been at least two months since anyone had ridden her, so we took it slow and easy! My aim was to assess what she knew and what she’d be comfortable with to get a baseline to help me plan the best exercises to do with her this spring.

I started with working on getting her to stand quietly by the mounting block. (I like mounting blocks because they let my horse voice an opinion, as I wrote about here.) She was pretty skeptical about this at first, and would back up or swing her hindquarters out when I stepped on to the block. After a bit of repetition, this improved a lot. I’m not sure how much experience (if any!) she had previously with being mounted from a mounting block.

I also spent a chunk of time petting and rubbing on her from the mounting block, as well as leaning over her and putting weight on her back. Although I know she’s been ridden some before, I wanted to test her reaction. It’s best to not make too many assumptions with young horses! She did great though, so after not too long, I swung a leg over and hopped on.

We wandered around the round pen for just a few minutes and then I got off. Since she had been a bit hesitant about the mounting block, we spent the rest of the time practicing getting on and off. I’d get on, let her walk around for a two or three minutes, then hop off and repeat. We probably did this eight or ten times and she seemed a lot more confident by the end. We’ll continue working on this, as well as working on steering and walk/woah transitions.

I’ll keep you updated on her progress!

March Clicker Carnival Coming Soon

Mary Hunter — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:27:47 +0000

My, didn’t February fly by!

Dallas saw some crazy snow but has recently returned to lovely, sunshiny 50s. I attended the 2010 Art and Science of Animal Training Conference at UNT, which was phenomenal. Gatsby and Daisy, two of our young horses, learned how to wear halters and started working on leading. And just this past weekend, Autumn Blaze wore a halter for the first time.

Also, quite uneventfully, staleCheerios turned one year old. The blog is growing and has nearly 150 subscribers now. I’ve had so much fun with the blog so far and have met so many others who are passionate about animals and training. I love reading the wonderful and insightful comments many of you leave.

As some of my newer readers might not know, I run a monthly blog carnival for clicker training and positive training. If you blog, I’d love to have you participate in the March edition, which will be published on Friday. Please submit your articles by Thursday evening at the latest. Here are the details and submission information.

Do you blog about positive animal training? Submit your favorite blog post from February to the March edition of the Clicker Carnival, the only blog carnival specifically for positive animal trainers. All submissions related to positive training are welcome, from personal training stories, to how-to articles and videos, to product and book reviews. Read more about the carnival here or submit your articles here. The February Edition was a great success. If you missed it, be sure to check it out.

(What’s a blog carnival? A blog carnival is a monthly collection of blog posts pertaining to a certain topic. Carnivals are a great way for bloggers to showcase their best posts and for readers to discover interesting blog articles.)

Tootie and the Terrible Twos? (video)

Mary Hunter — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:11:40 +0000

We recently brought Tootie back to the ranch. He’s growing up fast, I think he’s double the size he was at the end of last summer! He’s also getting a lot darker. He should be a lovely dapple gray when he sheds out this spring.

Tootie has been handled since birth and he loves people–sometimes almost too much! He is very much a pocket pony, all he wants to do in the pasture is follow me around, sniff me, nuzzle me, bite me…

Since he didn’t get worked with much at all this fall or winter, he needs a review of some of the basics. Tootie will be two in March. We want to make sure this coming year will be the terrific twos, not the terrible twos!

The biggest thing he needs work on is basic manners–personal space and biting/nipping. This can be challenging with a young horse as many times this is attention seeking behavior. So, punishing the horse, shaking your hands at them or even driving them away can make it even worse–it just becomes a fun game for the horse.

One good solution is to teach the horse an alternative behavior. (or several alternative behaviors!) This gives the horse something positive and productive that they can do to earn attention and reinforcement. It also shifts the trainer’s focus to what they want the horse to do, instead of what they don’t want the horse to do to. If the horse has his head down, is backing up, or any other number of behaviors, you have a way to ask him politely to stay out of your space.

Tootie and I did some basic free shaping today. I worked on shaping him to turn his head away from me, which is a great way to start practicing self control!

He’s horrible about mugging so I started shaping this behavior from the other side of the fence. If you have a horse who enjoys crowding or nipping, it’s a great idea to start teaching the horse from the opposite side of a stall or fence. This keeps you safe and often makes it easier for the horse to be successful.

Once he was starting to get the hang of it, I went in with him and continued shaping the behavior. Considering that it’s been months since he’s had any training or work, he did really well today. Although we just started this, you can see in the short clip below that he’s a pretty quick learner. He knows exactly what he has to do to get that treat!

Steve Martin: Training Birds with Trust Accounts

Mary Hunter — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:13:36 +0000

I love hearing Steve Martin speak. (the bird trainer, not the actor!) He was one of my favorite speakers at the 2009 Art and Science of Animal Training conference and I enjoyed his talk at this year’s conference just as much. These are a few of my thoughts from his talk.

Steve Martin is a bird trainer. Specifically, he works mainly with free flight bird shows. Free flight bird training is a lot like training a dog, horse or dolphin. A good trainer has to understand about positive reinforcement, stimulus control, shaping, cues, etc. Here’s a big difference–at any point your trainee can take to the wind and fly away. (Of course, a dog or horse can run away just as well, but we employ lots of solutions to prevent this, fences, leashes, lead ropes and the like.)

Most bird shows keep their birds hungry. They keep the birds below their natural weight so that the birds are eager performers and willing to quickly come back for any bit of food. Steve Martin’s bird shows fly their birds at or above their natural weight. By manipulating the environment and when food is available, he is able to keep his birds motivated and happy, without having them in a constant state of hunger. And his birds perform amazingly. For instance, at the State Fair of Texas Birds of the World show, part of the show involves releasing a bird from a top car of the Texas Star ferris wheel. The bird swoops down from the car, flies across the park and lands on the show’s stage. (Pretty impressive, especially considering that the Texas Star, at 65 meters, is the largest Ferris wheel in the Western Hemisphere.)

Part of Steve Martin’s talk focused on building trust accounts with our animals. A trust account is like a bank account, when we’re training with positive reinforcement or doing things the animal likes, we’re making deposits into that trust account. When we’re using aversives and punishers or doing things the animal doesn’t like, we’re making withdrawals from that trust account. If we have a large, positive balance in our trust account we’re going to have willing, eager animals that want to be around us.

One interesting point that Steve Martin made was that sometimes we don’t recognize when we’re making withdrawals from the trust accounts we have with our animals. I think this is a really important point to consider, especially when training isn’t going as smoothly as we would like. Just because we think a request is reasonable or just because we think an animal should be okay with something, doesn’t mean the animal feels the same way! Even when we’re clicker training or attempting to train with mostly positive reinforcement, there are still plenty of opportunities for our animals to get frustrated, annoyed or scared.

A good trainer is able to give the animal power over their environment. This builds confidence and trust. We can do this by taking responsibility for what the animal does and giving the animal the right to say no. When things go wrong, it can be really, really easy to blame it on the animal. The animal is being stubborn, hard-headed, a jerk, pushing your buttons, messing with your mind, trying to annoy you, the list of labels goes on and on.

The classic example is the horse who can’t be caught. The rider usually ends up annoyed and frustrated at the horse, who is being “bad.” The rider usually doesn’t stop to think that maybe there have been one too many withdrawals and the horse wants nothing to do with the rider. Of course, it’s easier to blame the animal. It’s pretty humbling to admit that an animal actually wants absolutely nothing to do with you.

However, when our animals misbehave, they’re trying to tell us something! It would be good of us to listen to what they have to say.

Good training is about communication, confidence and motivation. The animal must clearly understand what we’re asking, believe he is able to perform the request and be properly motivated to complete the task. When we build up that trust account, we create a willing partnership with our animals. Do you have a bright-eyed, enthusiastic animal who gets excited about training? Or do you need to reevaluate the balance in your trust account and what’s motivating your animal?

Ken Ramirez: Animal Trainers Need People Skills Too!

Mary Hunter — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:27:53 +0000

Ken Ramirez, the head trainer from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, spoke about the skills necessary to be a good animal training consultant at the Art and Science of Animal Training Conference. His talk, titled Wanted: Animal Trainer Consultant, those good with animals need not apply, emphasized how a good consultant or instructor MUST have good people skills. Many people want to become an animal professional because they enjoy working with animals. However, many animal training jobs are really about working with people and teaching people to train animals. Because of this, an ability and desire to work with people is essential.

Here’s a few of the tips Ken Ramirez gave that I thought were really important. Most of these suggestions are beneficial for any situation where there’s multiple people dealing with an animal, even if you’re not a high paid animal consultant.

1. Clearly Identify the Problem
Does everyone involved see the same problem? Are different goals or principles getting in the way of a solution? People will disagree. A good trainer will help people negotiate and agree on a common goal. Everyone involved must agree on a plan and be committed to be consistent, otherwise the animal will get conflicting information.

2. Identify and Explain Sacrifices
Many people call in a consultant looking for that magic bullet, a quick and easy solution. Most animal “problems” have dozens of possible solutions. However, many solutions require a change or sacrifice, such as money spent, more time, additional personnel, or an change in thinking. A good consultant shows people that there are lots of possible solutions, if the client understands the effort required to implement them.

3. Communicate clearly and speak your client’s language
Understand the client, where they are coming from and what examples and terminology will make the most sense to them. Make sure they are open to listening. Importantly, don’t demean or belittle any past training they have done.

4. Encourage a shift in thinking
Find solutions and help expose half-truths, myths and excuses. Shift the questions from “What’s wrong with the problem animal?” to “What behaviors do I want to see and how can I train it?” A good trainer gives clear guidance for thinking about alternatives and has a system for finding the least intrusive method to approach the problem.

5. Positively Reinforce your clients
Build relationships with your clients, gain their trust and then don’t betray it. Find out what motivates the people you work with and make sure they’re getting something out of it. What’s in it for them? What’s going to motivate them to follow through with training or instructions? Learning more about your clients will help you to implement better training solutions.

Ken Ramirez is a great speaker, his lecture was full of all sorts of interesting stories from consulting with zoos and other animal programs. These stories ranged from training sharks to a past client asking him to provide marriage counseling (he declined).

As Ken said during the lecture, “Training the animals is the easy part!” If people could easily understand and solve a problem, they wouldn’t need to call in a trainer or consultant. A great animal trainer knows how to train animals AND understands how to work with people.

Clicker Training Shoulder Targeting

Mary Hunter — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:25:16 +0000

I often think of targeting as a simple exercise. It’s one of the first skills I teach the horses when clicker training and it works great for teaching other behaviors. Usually, I think of targeting as a dog or horse touching their nose to something. However, there are many different ways to expand on targeting to teach advanced skills and to make our animals more aware of their bodies.

Ginger and I recently began working on a shoulder target. This means she targets her shoulder onto an object. For now I’m using my hand, later we’ll expand to a target stick or some other objects. It’s been a fun learning experience so far. I’ve kind of been making up what to do as I go along, as I’ve never done this before.

Here’s a video clip of where we were yesterday, Day 3. We have a pretty nice loop going, she moves so her shoulder touches my hand, I click and throw the food, she finds the food and then moves back into position. (This is loopy training for dogs!) Several times in the video I move my hand out a bit farther once she gets into position, asking her to move into my hand a bit more. Sometimes she is almost forceful about pushing into my hand. Today was the first day when she really seemed to “get” that it was about touching my hand, rather than just standing in a particular spot.

Training Log So Far

Day 1

I originally started with a target stick. However, the target stick I chose is a tennis ball on a stick and she only wanted to bite and play with the tennis ball! Bad choice on my part. I decided starting with a hand would be easier than an object, especially since with my hand I can feel how hard she is pressing against me.

After we ditched the tennis ball, I started with her letting me touch her shoulder while she was in a down. This was actually hard at first. Ginger gets very energetic during training and was not keen about me touching or petting her. She also assumed my hand heading towards her was some sort of cue and kept throwing behavior at me, sits, downs, bows, you name it! So, having her in a down helped her settle a bit and figure out that all I wanted to do was to touch her shoulder. Then we repeated this with her standing.

Day 2

Started where we left off, with her standing in front of me, letting me touch her shoulder. I decided I wanted a movement cycle. I though this would help her get the concept faster than if I tried to teach it with her standing still. I originally began by throwing the treats behind her. She started staying farther away from me, as this was closer to where the food was being delivered. So, I switched to throwing the treats to my right side. Wrong side! Since I wanted her moving into my hand, I realized throwing the treats off to my left was the most logical. This did take a bit of coordination to master at first!

By the end, she would collect the treat and then return in front of me. She wasn’t particularly paying attention to my hand. However, she’d shift over a step or two more if I withheld the click.

Day 3

Yesterday she really started putting pressure on my hand when she returned. In addition, if I moved my hand away a bit more, she’d continue moving over until she found my hand. The food delivery part of our loop is still a little messy at times–she’ll sniff around looking for the treat if she doesn’t see it immediately.

Has anyone else worked on body targeting with their dog (or horse or other animal)? Any suggestions or tips? Or, any ideas for interesting or fun tricks to teach? I’d love to hear your feedback or experiences if you’ve tried something like this.

Kay Laurence: Assessing Your Animal Training Skills

Mary Hunter — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:36:17 +0000

Are you good at training animals? Are you great at shaping, but not so good at putting behavior under stimulus control? You know you’re a better trainer than your next door neighbor, but you’re nowhere near the level of the expert trainer who runs your agility class….

Good, better, worse, best, intermediate, beginner, expert. The ways we evaluate our skill as a trainer and compare ourselves to others is usually completely subjective. What are we actually measuring? Kay Laurence spoke about the important hows and whys of assessing our own skills as animal trainers. Below are a few of the points she highlighted that I thought were particularly important.

1. Learning to Assess
Being able to self assess yourself is essential for moving forward. Part of Kay Laurence’s talk focused on her Competency Assessment Programme (CAP). However, assessment is not about ticking off boxes and passing a test. Instead, it’s much more important to learn how to evaluate your own strengths, weaknesses and progress. For any skill you want to assess you must understand the point of the criteria and what it is measuring. This is far more important than someone else telling you if you’ve passed or failed.

2. Measurable Criteria
Any form of assessment needs objective, measurable criteria. We are inclined to measure training subjectively, saying a task looked “good,” “very nice,” or “better than last time.” But this is not an accurate way to actually tracking progress and skill. Defined goals and detailed training logs are a more efficient way to track progress. As well, we need to assess all parts of training–getting behavior, shaping, finishing behavior, generalization, stimulus control and maintenance over time, rather than just looking at the final behavior.

3. Skill Based Criteria
Most of the time our assessment criteria is based on tasks and final products; we look at the end result. However, understanding the teaching process of how to get from A to B is just as, if not more beneficial. Excellence in a competitive field is not a measure of training competency, it could just indicate that you had someone great who was giving you good instruction. As I look over Kay Laurence’s CAP program, I see that many of the things it tests are skills, rather than specific tasks (such as sit or stay). For instance, part of the Level 1 program requires being able to “operate the clicker in either hand with a non-visual movement” and to “give reasons for choice of reward.”

4. The Teacher Takes Responsibility
The good trainer will take responsibility for what her students (animal or human) have or have not learned. Sharon Foley says this nicely: “If the horse knew what I wanted and believed he was able to do it, he’d BE doing it.” If the dog (or horse or human) knew what you wanted, understood how to do it and was motivated to carry out the request, he or she would be doing it!

5. Assessment is Never Comparative
Comparing yourself to your neighbor, trainer or best friend isn’t going to get you much of anywhere. Instead, focus on comparing yourself to objective criteria or tracking your progress over time. Aim to be the best you can be, rather than better than someone else.

6. Periodically Reassess the Basics
When’s the last time you retested your basic mechanics or tried some of the basic behaviors you first taught the animal? As training gets more complex and our skills get more refined, it’s important to check and make sure your foundation is still in place. Double check what’s cueing the dog, your clicker or your right elbow! (Some) horse people could really benefit from this back to basics idea. It’s startling the number of upper level show horses who have trouble with basic skills such as trailer loading or leading.

Towards the end of the talk, Kay Laurence shared a great quote for any trainer:

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
Marcel Proust

Ultimately, advanced skills are only a refinement and deeper exploration of basic skills. But, if we develop our ability to self-assess, we will be better equipped to discover the nuisances of training and the differences between good and great training.