I mentioned in my back to school post a couple of weeks ago that I am taking an ethics class this semester. This class is one of the required classes for my behavior analysis master’s program. The class has been pretty interesting so far and each class has been filled with plenty of good discussions and debate.

Recently we read a book chapter by Rushworth Kidder called “The Ethics of Right versus Right.” (If you’re interested, the full chapter is actually available for free from the Institute for Global Ethics, although you do have to sign up to get access to it.)

Tough choices and ethical dilemmas are often very hard to make. What makes these decisions hard, according to Kidder, is that they are often choices of “right” vs. “right.” Both possibilities have value and merit, yet one must be picked over the other. (Now, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t still right vs. wrong choices. These just aren’t ethical decisions.)

The most interesting part of this chapter was that Kidder names four basic paradigms that encompass most of these ethical dilemmas, the right vs. right choices. Ethical choices often involve decisions between:

• Individual versus community
• Truth versus loyalty
• Short term versus long term
• Justice versus mercy

These four basic paradigms can be useful for analyzing ethical choices and realizing what has created the conflict. If you have a better understanding of a choice, then you should be better prepared to solve it.

Ethical questions arise all the time in both animal training and in animal rescue work. I’ve been thinking recently of some of the ethical questions I’ve run into and how they fit into these four paradigms. For instance, many decisions in animal rescue work deal with how to allocate scarce resources. Many of these questions are often questions of “individual versus group” or questions about “short term versus long term.”

For example, should a rescue spend a significant amount of money to save an animal that needs extensive medical care, when the same amount of money could provide vaccinations and basic health care for half a dozen other animals? Or, during training, is it okay to do something that is very unpleasant for the animal for the short term if it will have long term benefits for both the animal and owner? And so on.

Of course, there are no “right” answers to any of these questions. Solutions often depend on the specifics of a certain situation and the personal values of the people involved. Still, I think it’s pretty interesting to think about what underlying decision makes something a hard ethical choice. If someone breaks a well known rule, should you provide the appropriate consequences or show the person a bit of mercy? Have you had to choose between something that would benefit an individual as opposed to something that would be better for a larger community or group?

What do you think about these paradigms? If you find this interesting or would like to see more examples, I encourage you to check out the link to the chapter toward the top of this post. Now, the book does focus entirely on examples that deal with people. I’d love to hear what sorts of ethical and moral decisions have you come across while working with and training animals. For example, I think many people run into ethical decisions regarding how to act and what to say when interacting with people who train in ways that differ from how they train.

Recently I attended clickerExpo, a large animal training conference held in Kentucky. One session at clickerExpo that I really enjoyed was a lecture by Michele Pouliot called Going Up!: Elevating Your Freestyle Training with Platforms. Michele Pouliot is a top trainer, she’s worked for decades with the training programs for Guide Dogs for the Blind and is also well known for her performances at national and international canine freestyle competitions.

Her lecture centered around using platforms to get and train precise behaviors. First, Michele stressed at the beginning that this is not anything new. Maybe not, but it can be so helpful for an expert to take something that seems simple enough and define and illustrate it in a way that gives it more meaning and makes the advantages clearer.

For many freestyle behaviors, Michele Poiliot first trains the behavior using a platform (or multiple platforms). The platform can be anything, an old doormat, a carpet scrap, a board, a small box, as long as it is easy for the animal to find. Having the platform slightly raised or a different texture makes it easier for the dog to distinguish between the floor and the platform. The appropriate size for a platform can vary, depending on the size of the dog and the task that you are teaching. Here are some examples of how this might work during training:

1) Train a dog to go from a heel position at your side to a front position in front and facing you with two platforms, one in each position. Once the dog learns the movement, add a cue and then fade out the platforms.

2) Train a dog to stand 10 feet away from you and wave its paw at you by having her go to and stand on a small platform, then do the waving behavior.

3) Train a dog to rotate his back legs while the front legs stay stationary by starting with the dog’s two front feet on a small raised platform or stool. Once the dog learns the movement and cue, remove the platform.

During the talk, Michele Pouliot showed some very nice video footage of the first example, a dog going from heel position to a front position. This is a behavior that can be hard to get correct–the dog swings too wide, or doesn’t line up correctly, or any other number of errors. Its a behavior that often looks messy at the beginning and then the handler has to clean up the behavior over time.

The platforms serve as targets that tell the dog exactly where he’s suppose to line up. The dog knows (and enjoys) going to platform 1 and platform 2. So, you can then arrange the platforms to get the behavior you want–going from heel to front.

The platforms help restrict the environment and limit the range of behavior you get during the teaching process. Rather than having to guess, the dog knows from the beginning exactly where to go. This reduces frustration or stress for the dog (and trainer) and gives cleaner behavior from the beginning because the dog is not practicing errors.

When we teach new behavior, we’re teaching the animal the muscle movement sequence for that behavior and cue. If the behavior is messy at the beginning and we’re required to go through a lot of shaping steps, we end up reinforcing a lot of behavior that we really don’t want later on. These approximations can then crop back up later on. If we can get clean behavior quickly, the dog learns the correct behavior sequence from the start.

I think there are many times when our training processes are not as refined as they should be. Even with good shaping skills, it’s easy to end up with bits of messiness or unwanted behavior while teaching a new skill. Platforms, pedestals and mats have plenty of applications in the horse world–everything from teaching a horse to line up to a mounting block to helping a horse learn to lunge in a circle. Good training is also about being creative. I saw some uses of platforms in Michele Pouliot’s talk that I never would have thought to use a platform for training that particular behavior. If we can figure out ways to constrain the environment, we help the animal be successful from the beginning.

I’m going to start doing wordless Wednesday posts. If I have any really fun training photos, I’ll post them. But, most weeks I’m planning to feature some of the rescue animals I work with. I work with the dogs and cats at the Denton Animal Shelter and also with rescue horses at Never-E-Nuff Acres Horse Rescue and Sanctuary. These posts won’t be completely wordless. Sometimes I’ll cheat and include a short description or some information about the animal.

This week’s adoptable pet is Archer. He’s a gorgeous Russian blue who’s available for adoption at the Denton Animal Shelter starting today. This handsome young man is also quite a sweetheart. He had a great time playing with us yesterday when we let him out for some play time. Hopefully he’ll find a great new home this week!

Note: Please feel free to link to my wordless Wednesday posts or share them on facebook, especially if you live in Texas or have friends in north Texas who might be interested in these animals.

I recommend stopping and listening to your horse when your horse says “No.” Try and figure out why the horse is acting this way. Is he confused, frustrated, scared, or in pain? Often when horses don’t “obey” it is only because they don’t understand what the trainer is asking. If so, it’s best to ask in a different way or keep working on training that behavior. Also, forcing a horse who is scared or in pain can really backfire on you in the long run.

However, sometimes things “have to” get done. Your horse has to cross that creek so that you can get back to the barn. Or, he has to get on that trailer so that you can get him to the vet clinic. And so on. We’ve been discussing how to deal with “have to” situations recently on one of the horse clicker lists.

My friend Jane, over at Bookends Farm, wrote a really nice blog post summarizing her own views on this topic. I highly recommend that you check it out. Here’s the link: Do I Have to?

I’ve been thinking about this for the past week and want to share just a few thoughts on this topic.

1. Don’t Wait Until You Get to “Have To”

Sometimes, for medical or safety reasons, we must get something done. The trail horse must stop at the busy intersection so that neither of you gets hit by oncoming traffic. The sick horse must get on the trailer so that you can go to the vet. Don’t wait until you get into these situations to start teaching trailer loading or a reliable woah! Plan, prepare, and anticipate. Spend time practicing and training skills that you know are going to be important later.

2. Assess Your Own Motivations

Jane talks about this in the post I linked to above. Why does the horse “have to” to this? Does the horse have to get on the trailer this afternoon because he’s hurt and needs to go see the vet or because you need to go impress your friends at the local horse show?

When you find yourself saying “must,” or “have to,” or “right now,” think about your own motivations. Do you have the horse’s safety and best interest in mind? What personal motivations are influencing your decision? Understanding your own behavior and motivations will ultimately help you become better a better trainer.

3. Even during “have to,” you still have options

Even when something has to get done, you can still choose how to go about doing it. We had a new foster family come last weekend to pick up two of the mares at our rescue. The mares needed to get on the trailer, but were pretty skeptical about the family’s metal stock trailer, which was very different from the rescue’s trailer. One mare, as well, has a history of bad trailer loading experiences.

We could have used ropes and whips and gotten both horses on the trailer fairly quickly. Instead, we spent about an hour and a half working with both horses with the trailer. The foster family helped some and was incredibly patient about letting us take the time to work with the horses. We had to get the horses loaded, but we chose to go about it slowly and calmly, rather than pushing and forcing.

When “No” is really “Yes”

Here’s one final thought and example about why this topic is so important. Horses are often trying to do right and trying to please us. When a horse says “no” or disobeys, this is often because of miscommunication or lack of communication, rather than the horse purposefully trying to be disobedient.

Here’s a great example from a gal I recently met on facebook named Tamsin.

“The other day on our way home from a hack, my pony stopped and refused to walk on when I asked. Eventually, I worked out that he was telling me to climb aboard. We’re doing a lot of in hand work at the moment as he’s coming back to full fitness. He had stopped next to the post I’d used to mount up as we went out on our hack! If I’d seen that just as him being disobedient, I would have missed a really important moment. That was the first time he’s ever asked me to get on!!”

Yesterday I spent the morning playing with some fun felines at our local animal shelter. Last semester, several of the guys I go to school with started a partnership through ORCA with our local animal shelter. They’ve been going out to the shelter several days a week, helping with training and also with everything else that needs to get done at a busy shelter, from cleaning cages, to walking dogs, to talking to potential adopters. I started working some with them at the end of last year, which was a lot of fun and a great learning opportunity. It’s great to see how just a bit of training, attention, and love can make a big difference in a dog’s behavior and dramatically increase the dog’s chance of getting adopted.

Dogs are fun, but shelter cats need some love and attention too! Actually, this shelter already has a great and very devoted group of volunteers. But, as in any shelter, they can always use a few more hands. So, starting this past week, my friend Kat and I are helping out in the shelter’s cat room. We spent several hours this morning at the shelter, cleaning cages, talking to adopters and giving the cats lots and lots of attention!

The big handsome guy at the top of this post is Rocky. He’s a big, muscular guy and had obviously been on the streets for awhile. Rocky was terrified when he first came to the shelter and it was thought that he might have been a feral cat. However, he is becoming quite a love bug! He wanted all the attention today and meowed sorrowfully when I would stop petting him and walk over to another cat.

The petite gray kitty is Echo. And the rather large Calico in the last two pictures is Patches. Both these gals were pretty timid when they first came to the shelter as well. Shelters can be pretty scary places for both dogs and cats–tons of strange sights and smells, and lots of new people and other animals. It’s not surprising that it can take an animal several days to adjust to all of this.

Patches was pretty unsure of her surroundings when she first showed up at the shelter. When we were at the shelter on Thursday, she was starting to come out of her shell and really enjoyed some scratches and petting. Yesterday, however, she wanted to be the life of the party! We let her wander around the cat room a bit and she had a great time exploring. When anyone new came into the room, she wanted to rub up against them and say “hello.”

A rescue group came in the afternoon and was impressed by her sweet personality. So, Patches is in a foster home with them now and hopefully they will be able to find her an awesome forever home.

I think Kat and I are going to have a lot of fun helping out at the shelter this semester. I have lived with several cats, but don’t actually have a whole lot of experience with training cats and have never worked with cats in a shelter environment. So, I’m looking forward to getting to help out the kitties at the shelter while learning a lot. The hardest part, of course, is going to be resisting the urge to bring them all home with me! I’ll make sure the cats appear on the blog every now and then, for all of you cat lovers out there.

Cheyenne is a young paint mare at our rescue who I have recently started riding. She had about three rides last fall and a handful more during my winter break. Just recently we’ve had two short, but great, rides working on backing up with a rider.

Up to now, Cheyenne and I have worked on going forward and stopping. We’ve also worked a bit on steering and circles. I don’t force or even ask a horse to go forward during the first few rides—I like forward motion to be the horse’s idea.

Many people associate bucking and other bad behaviors with starting young horses under saddle. These “bad” behaviors often start because people are pushing or prodding the horse to move forward before the horse feels comfortable and ready. For a young horse, having a person on his back is a totally strange experience! It can take a horse a few rides before they really start to feel balanced moving forward with a rider.

I let the horse stand around as much as they want on the first few rides and click for any signs of forward motion. Soon, we’re usually taking a few small baby steps and then pretty soon afterward the horse is usually wandering all over the round pen! Then it’s time to work on woahs and make sure the horse understand that stopping will earn a reward too. (Some of this process is illustrated in this video of Tex’s second ride.)

Cheyenne figured out how to go forward pretty quickly. Then, however, she got a bit impatient because she always wanted to keep walking! So, I had to make sure stopping was highly rewarded so that she would learn that this was a good behavior too. Now that we have forward and woah balanced, it’s a good time to start working on a bit of backing.

I started on the ground. Cheyenne has had some groundwork and ground driving, so we did just a bit of review. I stood on the ground at her shoulder and asked her to take a step or two back. Then, I stood by her withers with my hands in approximately the position they would be while I was riding and ask her to take a step or two backward. We practiced this a bit and then I got on.

It’s always good to make sure a horse can do a behavior on the ground first. If the horse doesn’t have the understanding or confidence to do the behavior from the ground, there’s no way the horse is going to do the behavior with a rider! Also, by standing at Cheyenne’s withers, I was able to practice giving very similar rein cues to what I would give when I was on her. This helped make the transition from backing on the ground to backing with a rider much easier.

After we practiced some on the ground, I hopped on her back. I started by giving the same rein cue I had given from the ground, plus the seat and leg cues I wanted her to associate with backing. Pretty soon, she took one step back. I immediately clicked and gave her a treat. We kept doing this and she caught on super fast!

I’ve been watching Alexandra Kurland’s Loopy Training DVD. Much of the DVD discusses creating small, clean, tight loops of behavior. She also discusses how good it can be to use known behaviors to reinforce newer behaviors. (More info HERE about loopy training.)

So, Cheyenne and I started a nice little pattern. We started by the mounting block, which was about 15 feet away from one of her favorite cones. Cheyenne loves to target cones. This distance was far enough away that she was interested in the cone, but not completely drawn to it. I would ask her to back and as soon as she took one step back, I would click and treat. We would do this about 3 times, then I would release her forward and let her go walk forward and target the cone (for a click and treat, of course). She loves targeting the cone, so this was a great reward for several good steps backward.

Then, we’d either circle around back to the mounting block, or I would get off and lead her back to the mounting block. And we’d repeat the pattern. This pattern worked well because I could use the opportunity to walk to the cone to reinforcer her best efforts at backing up.

We made sure to take it slowly, just one or two steps backward each time. People often get into trouble when training horses to back up because they rush and ask for way too much at the beginning. A trainer might ask (and then demand) for a horse to take 10 steps backward, when the horse doesn’t even yet understand that the trainer wants 2 steps backward.

I am continuing to build this behavior slowly with Cheyenne. We’ll move on to asking for two steps back, then three, then four, and so on, until she has no problem backing all the way across the round pen. This is good shaping and good splitting and is the best way to create horses who back willingly without resisting or bracing against the pressure. Going in small steps at the beginning actually makes training go much faster later on!

This past weekend, we had our second session working on backing up. We kept building the behavior slowly, and by the end of this second, short session, she easily and willingly would take about half a dozen steps backward from a soft rein cue. I am really proud of Cheyenne’s progress so far! We’ll keep working on this over the coming weeks and I’ll try to get some video to share on the blog.

Last week was my first week back to school for the spring semester. As some of you know, I’m currently working on a master’s in behavior analysis at the University of North Texas. If you don’t know much about behavior analysis, I’d encourage you to check out the post that I wrote last year about “What is Behavior Analysis?”

School is a lot of fun — I get to spend all week talking about behavior and the principles of good training and teaching. What I learn at school applies directly to what I’m doing with the animals I train and gives me lots of new ideas to think about and try.

This semester I’m taking two classes. One class is called the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (EAB). We’ll read and discuss a lot of research papers that have discovered and explored basic principles of behavior. I’m excited about this class and plan to share some of what we’re learning on my blog. I’m also taking a class called Legal, Ethical, and Professional Issues. This should be pretty interesting as well.

This semester, I’m also a teaching assistant for an undergraduate behavior analysis course called Building Skills with Behavioral Technology. My graduate advisor, Jesus Rosales-Ruiz, teaches the course. This is a very neat course that covers a range of topics related to teaching and training, including shaping, chaining, errorless learning, programmed instruction, stimulus control, program development and more.

The students in the course also have to do a training project with an animal for part of their grade. I’m really looking forward to TAing this course, as it’s both an interesting and fun course. I’m planning to blog about some of the topics we talk about and read about in this course because the course covers many principles that relate to good animal training.

I’ll also be continuing many of the training projects through school that I was working on last semester. I’ll be working at a local nature museum with their Patagonian cavies and a raccoon. I’m also working at our local animal shelter with the dogs and cats at the shelter and will be helping to teach group training classes for people who adopt animals from the shelter.

Also, I’m really looking forward to March! In less than two months we’ll be having the 4th annual Art and Science of Animal Training Conference at UNT. This is one of my favorite parts of the year. If you are anywhere near the Dallas area, I urge you to attend. If you are not familiar with the conference, I have my notes from the first two conferences here.

This should be a very busy semester, but also an exciting semester!

The two lectures she gave in the morning were pretty interesting. In the afternoon, we had a handful of presentations so that some of my fellow graduate students could share their current research projects. This was great fun because it resulted in a lot of good discussion and conversation.

One fun thing about graduate school is that I get to interact with and learn from people who are involved in areas of behavior analysis that are pretty different from what I do. It’s fascinating to get to see different perspectives and approaches to teaching and training. At the end of the day, though, what I’m often left realizing is that good training is good training, no matter what species you work with or what task you are trying to train.

One thing that the speaker mentioned in one of her morning lectures was that when teaching a particular behavior, we should focus on training only one thing at a time. During a training session, only work on improving one aspect or feature of a behavior at a time.

Animal trainers often get in to trouble here! For instance, when teaching an animal to stay, work on increasing the duration of the behavior separately from increasing the distance between you and the animal. Don’t try to train both of these at once! This can be confusing to the animal and can slow down our training. When training, try to do what animal trainers refer to as a splitting, rather than lumping. (What is splitting?)

Taking lots of short breaks during a training session can make it a lot easier to be a good splitter. This is one thing I’ve learned from horse clicker trainer Alexandra Kurland. I often train in short sessions, 10-20 treats. At the beginning of the session, I decide what we’re going to work on during that session. Then, when I run out of treats, I take a short break before the next session. During the break I decide whether to work again on the same thing or whether we’re ready to move on. If the last session didn’t go so well, I might decide to move to something easier or different, so that the animal can be successful and understand what I want.

I think the take home message from all of this is that it helps to have a well thought out plan before you begin each training session. When we are trying to train too much at once, it is often because we haven’t thoroughly assessed where the animal is currently and what exactly, specifically, we want to work on in the current training session.

These are some pictures from last summer that I just ran across. I know they are old, but I’m still posting them because I LOVE them! Most horses are naturally VERY curious. Especially if they are given the time and space to explore something new. Horses get scared when we force them to interact with new things, instead of allowing the horse the time to investigate at his own pace.

Temple Grandin says that what animals are often afraid of is “forced novelty”—when we push the horse into new situations that he does not understand. Confidence increases when the animal feels like he has control over his environment and surroundings. (More about this here).

The following pictures show Luna checking out the new hay ring the rescue got last summer. (Luna’s the pony I wrote about in this post about a week ago. She made SO much progress last year.) Luna can be very skeptical about new things. However, given time to investigate and explore, she approached and retreated from the hay ring, even approaching close enough to smell it. Then, after a few more approaches, she walked all the way through the hay ring! After that, she turned around and walked back through it the other way. What a brave little pony.

If you are working with a horse who is scared of something, DO NOT try to force the horse to approach the scary object! Instead, use other strategies to help the horse build his confidence. For instance, make the scary thing smaller or less intense, if possible. You can turn down the pressure on a scary water hose or fold up a scary plastic bag to make it smaller. Find a place to start working where the horse can remain comfortable and relaxed.

Let the horse choose when to approach and honor the horse’s requests to move away. If the horse needs to take a step or two backward, let him, rather than trying to pull on the lead to keep the horse in one spot. You can practice approaching and retreating from the scary thing, gradually getting closer.

That’s what I did with Autumn when we found a crinkly balloon in the yard (pictures here). With a clicker trained horse, this quickly becomes a fun game for the horse because the horse learns that she will get a click and a treat for approaching and touching new objects. Novel objects then become something fun to investigate, rather than something scary to run away from.

Don’t Shoot the Dog will change the way you think about behavior, teaching and training. If you’ve ever wondered how to change the behavior of a pet, a child, a spouse, a co-worker, or even your own behavior, then Don’t Shoot the Dog is the book for you. You’ll learn how to keep your cat from jumping on the counters, how to teach your kids to say thank you and pick up their dirty socks, and how to get your dog to stop pulling and start walking politely on a leash.

Don’t Shoot the Dog was one of the first books I read about the science of behavior, before I knew anything about applied behavior analysis or clicker training. Even though I’m working on a master’s degree in behavior analysis now, I still think Don’t Shoot the Dog is one of the best introductions to the study of behavior and training. I still even refer back to it from time to time.

Last semester I had fun reading back through the book with several friends at school. So, I wanted to do a brief review of the book while it is still on my mind. I love Don’t Shoot the Dog because it’s easy to understand, even for those not familiar with animal training or people training. Although the book is wide-read in the dog training community (probably because of the title), it will appeal to a broad audience. Karen Pryor did not originally intend the book to be for dog trainers and the examples throughout include all sorts of animal species, including people.

What you’ll learn from this book.

In the first half of Don’t Shoot the Dog, Karen Pryor explains reinforcement, shaping, and stimulus control. If you understand these three concepts you will be well on your way to becoming an awesome trainer or teacher. Most good trainers and teachers intuitively understand these concepts, although many can’t explain the details or science behind these principles.

The fourth chapter “Untraining: Using reinforcement to get rid of behavior you don’t want” was one of my favorites when I first read Don’t Shoot the Dog and is still one of my favorites. Karen Pryor explains 8 totally different methods for getting rid of unwanted behaviors, everything from punishment and shooting the animal to more humane methods, such as changing the animal’s motivation or training an incompatible behavior.

What I love about this fourth chapter is the examples. Karen Pryor picks 10 examples and explains how each of the eight methods could be applied to each example. I think this chapter really helped me start thinking about how, even with a seemingly impossible training problem, there are often actually many possible solutions. Great trainers are creative problem solvers. They can come up with unique and individualized training solutions in any situation. This chapter will really help get your creative juices flowing.

The last two chapters of Don’t Shoot the Dog provide lots of examples about how to apply reinforcement and the other principles in the book to the real world. Karen Pryor also includes a short introduction to clicker training. One thing that I like most about Don’t Shoot the Dog is that it is filled with real life stories. The examples in the book deal with a wide variety of species, settings and training situations, which really helps illustrate the importance and usefulness of the principles described in the book.

Can You Train a Chicken?

Here is one of my favorite quotes, from the end of the introduction of the book:

“Using positive reinforcers in one situation may show you how to use them in others. As a dolphin researcher whom I worked with sourly put it, “Nobody should be allowed to have a baby until they have first been required to train a chicken,” meaning that the experience of getting results with a chicken, an organism that cannot be trained by force, should make it clear that you don’t need to use punishers to get results with a baby. And the experience should give you some ideas about reinforcing baby behavior you want.”

People were training animals using positive reinforcement and clickers before Karen Pryor wrote Don’t Shoot the Dog. However, Don’t Shoot the Dog is largely responsible for starting a positive training revolution and bringing clicker training and positive training to the dog and horse training worlds. So, whether you train horses or dogs, or even humans or chickens, you’ll find Don’t Shoot the Dog a delightful and entertaining read. Even better, you’ll find ideas and answers for improving your teaching skills and your relationships with both animals and people.

Buy on Amazon: Don’t Shoot the Dog!: The New Art of Teaching and Training