The telegraphic leash

Keep a float in your line...

One of the Clicker Expo presentations that I found most interesting and valuable was given by Michele Pouliot on "The Right Touch." Michele is determined (hooray!) to reclaim the leash as a tool for training and communication rather than simply for management, and she's demonstrating more generally that there are ways to employ contact artfully, informatively, and positively. As I told her after her talk, I'd been quite literally feeling some of this stuff out for myself over the last six months or so, inspired in the main by Buck Brannaman's work with horses, by his emphasis on finding a "soft feel" and leaving a "float" in the rein, and by his further emphasis on the importance of developing sensitivity in the horse and the rider so as to make the rein a conduit of information in both directions. I thought there was no reason that a leash couldn't function similarly, and I'd found through trial and error that it very much could. (Of course, the idea that collar pressure -- like bit pressure -- can be communicative is hardly a new one, but the messages people have sent by leash have typically been blunt and unpleasant. The idea that light pressure might be converted from an aversive to a conditioned reinforcer is, I think, novel.)

Michele has been much less clumsy in her efforts, and she gave all of us at her talk a simple, clear, and efficient method for flipping our dogs' conception of pressure (and our own), from oppositional force to welcome invitation.** As she mentioned, there had been some trepidation on the part of the Expo organizers around her presentation of her process, given that it relies on negative reinforcement to get rolling, but I can say with absolute conviction that her method could have saved my dogs a great deal of annoyance if I'd been acquainted with it earlier. And even having muddled my way to a rough approximation of what she's doing with the leash, I am better able now to refine my techniques intelligently (and to expand them into similar work with hand to body contact). I can more easily move forward thanks not only to the clarity of her approach but also to the intellectual and moral affirmation I took from noting its overlap with my own nascent ideas. Out of respect for her care in presenting the specifics of her method, I'll wait to describe them here until I've had a chance to review her notes, but I think they should be disseminated widely, as I'm convinced that they have the potential to reduce the use of negative reinforcement significantly. As long as we use leashes primarily to contain rather than to communicate, and as long as we labor under the misconception that the signals we send each other across the line must necessarily be aversive, we miss a great opportunity to get in better touch with our dogs.

** It's probably no coincidence that Michele is a champion "freestyler," i.e., she dances (beautifully) with her dogs. Anyone who's done much partnered dancing can readily understand how this mode of training is analogous to "giving good weight," and can also guess how seamlessly it might integrate with other vital forms of kinesthetic awareness and communication.

Photo by George Grall.

I love you, dammit!!

Arktomorphism?

I just spent the weekend in the company of a few hundred trainers and a smattering of scientists at the annual west coast Clicker Expo, organized by Karen Pryor and her skilled cohorts. My exhaustion last night spoke to the quality of the program and the liveliness of the other attendees -- it's good to be reminded in a training context of how much energy the brain consumes when it's fully engaged!

There were many ideas and provocations I encountered in the ballrooms and hallways of the Doubletree Hotel that I want to return to, things I'll need to gnaw on for a long time before I can digest them. What looks most temptingly chewy this morning, however, is a question that was posed to me by a fellow trainer yesterday morning. I had volunteered with a dozen or so other KPA graduates to offer a little coaching to interested parties (two sessions of twenty minutes apiece), with donated proceeds going a local charity. We worked in pairs, and it was unfortunately toward the end of our first session that our "client," whose dog was not with her, described how he would often growl when he lay on his bed and she approached and pet him. What should she do?

I really regret that our next client was waiting and we weren't able to give the question the attention it deserves, because it's loaded. Personally, emotionally, and theoretically. I didn't get any further than remarking that the dog was telling her something that she'd be wise to respect, which might have been a fine response if I'd had time to elaborate it, but was surely too brusque given the circumstances. My partner did better, noting that the dog was a terrier, asking whether the dog followed her hand when she withdrew (yes), and suggesting that the dog might be experiencing a conflict of intent: to roughhouse or to cuddle? But we had to leave it at that.

On the theoretical side, this presents as a relatively straightforward matter of strategic reinforcement, and I hope the woman with the terrier found her way later that morning to Ken Ramirez's excellent lecture, wherein he explored the promise and perils of working with secondary reinforcers, those things (not always tangible, sometimes experiential) that accrue value only by their association to other things that satisfy an animal's strong intrinsic needs (i.e. primary reinforcers). Is gentle touch a primary reinforcer? Considered broadly, for slow-developing, social mammals, it does appear to satisfy an intrinsic need, especially early in life. (Harry Harlow's poor rhesus macaques demonstrated this most tragically and persuasively.) But touch is critical at that early stage in part because it is instructive: a mother's or other's tactile tenderness teaches us what kind of touch is safe, and when. Squirming, jostling littermates and human carers contribute significantly to that education in the case of most dogs. Physical intimacy is double-edged for all of us: it has the simultaneous potential to be terribly harmful or deeply rewarding. So each of us necessarily becomes a connoisseur of touch, highly idiosyncratic in our taste for different varieties of contact.

As Ken noted, in the practical life of a trainer or pet owner, the need to draw any distinction between primary and secondary reinforcers is not nearly so pressing as the question of whether something is reinforcing at all. The question for the woman with the terrier is not whether her dog has a primal desire for touch, but whether he wants to be touched by her, in that way, in that place, at that moment. His growling suggests that he does not. Which does not mean that her desire to touch her dog in such a way under such circumstances must remain forever frustrated, only that she needs to teach her dog to enjoy it. Or risk getting bit.

There are many people who see these (sometimes irresistible) urges to kiss, hug, and cuddle our pets as yet another dangerous form of anthropomorphism. This is true to the extent that our species-typical touch repertoires do not everywhere overlap, and we need to be attentive to the places where they typically diverge. But when we're talking about an individual human and an individual dog (or cat or monkey or whale or other human), knowledge of what is typical may not only be immaterial, it may also be distorting. There are quite a few of us humans who find hugs from most people in most contexts highly aversive. Some find them aversive from all people in all contexts. Can we be shaped to enjoy them? Most of us, probably. But the more often we get hugged when we do not want to be hugged, by people who just want to show us how much they love us, the less a hug will communicate that professed love, and the more likely we'll be to interpret it as invasive and aggressive. As someone who should really know better, I am sorry to say that I think I inflicted an unwanted hug on someone this weekend, and the sincerity of my affection had no bearing on the question of whether it was rewarding for the victim. I "anthropomorphized" her, insofar as I made the narcissistic assumption that my desire to hug her was mirrored by her desire to be hugged.

Animals do this to us, too, as we'd be wise to remember the next time we get leapt on, slobbered over, or humped. My husband has a pair of black running tights that we've taken to calling his "sexy pants," because they drive our boy Pazzo into an amorous frenzy. (Perhaps not coincidentally, Pete vaguely resembles Pazzo from the waist down when he wears them.) Pazzo is clearly sincere in his passion for Pete, but the very force of that passion makes him insensitive to the question of how best to express it.

Marker training basics III

what next?

Strengthening the marker's power.

Once you've established an association for your dog (or other animal) between the sound of your chosen marker and some valued reward, you can begin to use the marker to identify and encourage any and all behavior you like. If you have a totally untrained young pup, you might mark and reward a moment's quiet in an outburst of barking, then the next moment, and the next, until you find that the moments accumulate into longer spells of sweet silence.* Moments of eye contact are another great place to start with puppies and many full-grown dogs: everything you do in training will be built on a foundation of focused attention, so make it as wide and deep as you can. Don't worry at first about attaching cues to these behaviors. Saying "quiet" before your dog has arrived at a solid physical understanding of what quiet is will only create needless frustration for you both. And saying "QUIET!" will probably convince him that whatever he's barking at is even more threatening or exciting than he thought, since you're suddenly barking too.

If your dog already performs one or more behaviors pretty reliably when you ask for them, you could begin simply by marking correct responses to your cue. What's correct? For now, whatever it has been in the past. If your dog habitually responds to "sit" by backing up a couple of steps and settling lazily onto one haunch while sticking his other back leg out to the side, you know that's his definition of the word. Yours might be different, but for the moment you can set aside the task of bringing the two definitions together. Mark and reward every sit that follows your "sit," no matter how slow, no matter how sloppy. (You may find the sits get quicker and straighter in spite of your absence of effort.)

A few things to remember:

1. Give the cue only once. If your dog fails to respond, wait at least twenty seconds (and until you have his full attention) before giving it again, or "Sit. Sit. Sit!" may become your cue. Treat all words like empty vessels, and fill them deliberately with meaning.**
2. The mark is always followed by a reward. You don't have to mark every repetition of the behavior (I'll talk later about effective "schedules" for marking), but when you do mark, you're making a promise on which you need to deliver.
3. Work on one new behavior at a time. There's a significant exception to this rule that I'll talk about later, but this helps avoid confusion for the animal and accelerates learning.
4. Work in short sessions. Very short! Ten to fifteen repetitions between breaks. At the first sign of fatigue or fading interest, stop.
5. End on a high note. If possible, end with the new behavior you've been training, but if necessary end with a behavior the dog already knows well. Success breeds success.

What's most important in the early going (and ever after) is that you and your animal enjoy yourselves. I won't go into an elaborate defense of positive training methods here, but they follow from the (scientifically sound) premise that the training of voluntary behaviors proceeds most effectively and predictably from a state of eager but contained anticipation (especially in the case of a predatory animal). But even when training's fun, it's taxing. Again, the moment you notice your dog's interest flagging, or your own impatience rising, stop -- always, if you can help it, with a fresh success, however small. That way you'll continually create positive associations (for you and your animal) with training itself.

*On the other hand, I do not recommend that you begin by marking and rewarding a bark, especially if you're using a more powerful marker like a clicker. One thing to keep in mind is that the first few behaviors you effectively marker train will become the animal's default behaviors in future training. Quietly attentive behaviors (like eye contact or sit) are your best choices at the start.

**The trick with words (and other cues and markers) as vessels of meaning is that they might already be topped up. Old meanings can be difficult to dislodge, especially if they're loaded with pain or fear. Thus it's a very good idea (though sometimes difficult in practice) to avoid saying your pet's name in anger. If you want a truly empty word, try something rare, silly, or foreign. I lived in Bologna more than twenty years ago, and pretty much the only time I get to knock the rust off my Italian these days is when I'm cueing Pazzo with "fusilli!" (left spin) or "bombolone!" (right spin).

Marker training basics II

Sounds like...

...steak!!

Making the marker meaningful.

The principles and methods I'm describing here work across species; they've been used effectively in the training of countless animals, from rabbits to rhinoceroses, from grizzlies to gerenuks. (I highly recommend that all skeptics check out this brief article by Karen Pryor and the embedded video of a marker-trained rhino.) Before her death last year, our lovely calico Hops had learned through marker training to target my hand with her nose and to give me a head butt on the cue "Zidane" (which will only make sense if you follow European football). Most of my experience, however, has been with dogs, and for ease of reference I'll focus my discussion on them.

As I noted in the previous post, it's important that the stimulus you choose as a marker should initially possess little or no meaning for the animal you want to train. This will give you full freedom to endow it with the meaning you want: "Well done! Good things coming!" Here's yet another reason that words can be problematic as markers -- unless you're training a young puppy and you can commit in a disciplined way to reserving your marker word(s) exclusively for training, there's a high likelihood that their meanings will become muddied with unintended associations.

I'm strongly sympathetic to the visceral distaste that many people feel for clickers and other mechanical soundmaking doo-hickeys. They're cold and fussy and seem to require a third hand that we haven't got. Still more annoying, they interpose a barrier of artifice between trainer and trainee. However, for consistency, precision, and repeatability, they're really hard to beat. And paradoxical as it may seem, the little gap they introduce in our "natural" communication with other animals actually improves our mutual understanding immeasurably. No, I take that back -- the improvement can be measured, has been measured, and it's big.

So I recommend a clicker despite the possibility that it may not be totally neutral for you or your dog. Contrary to popular belief, you won't need to use it forever: once you've trained a specific behavior and put it reliably on cue, word markers will usually suffice to maintain the training. But you'll get to that maintenance stage much more quickly with a clicker, and once you're there I can pretty much guarantee that you'll notice a significant uptick in your dog's enthusiasm and attention anytime you pick that silly gadget back up. Likewise your cat's -- Hops would immediately start purring whenever I started a new training session.

Of course, that wasn't her first response to the clicker. She was mostly indifferent to it, maybe a little affronted. The sound it makes is short, sharp, and attention grabbing, qualities that make it effective for training but also make it rude in other contexts. So you'll want to introduce it carefully, from a distance, or muffled in a pocket. (It's best to avoid pointing the clicker like a t.v. remote at your dog's face.) Gauge your dog's response. Curiosity and/or indifference are a fine place to start, but if you see him/her shrink back, you'll need to take things more slowly.

If you decide to use another marker, just do what you can to keep it precise and consistent. A single syllable like "yes" generally works better to this end than a longer word.

Your first and most important task is to persuade your dog that, from this moment on, the following equation holds absolutely true:

"click" (or "yes") = wonderfulness

In order to establish that equation, you need to know what your dog already considers wonderful. Ideally you can identify among the many things your dog loves some thing(s) that are easily doled out in small bits. Food is the obvious candidate for a predatory species, and the one I rely on most heavily (probably too heavily, made complacent by my dogs' eager appetites). For early training, when the strength of a good impression takes precedence over perfect nutrition, I like (because my dogs like) hot dogs and smoked mozzarella, which are relatively inexpensive, have great intensity of flavor, and are easily divvied into tiny (1/4" by 1/4") cubes. Red Barn and Natural Balance also make meaty but dry food rolls that are as mouthwatering (to most dogs) as they are nourishing; they're my treat of choice when I work with dogs at the Oregon Humane Society. But it's good and sometimes necessary to think beyond food rewards; depending on the animal and the situation, they may be impractical and/or unrewarding. I've been working with Pazzo recently on his ability to keep the leash loose when we walk through our local squirrel-infested park (where he may be totally indifferent to food that isn't on the move). When he pulls the leash taut, I simply stop. The moment he gives me slack, I click and move with him in the direction of the squirrel. To Pazzo's delight, the squirrels will often double-down on my reward by staying put, and we've thus become a great slow-motion stalking team. Likewise, agility trainers will often reward their dogs with quick games of tug, and trainers of impassioned herders carefully control their access to sheep.

But for clarity's sake I'll assume that you've got a clicker, a hungry dog, and a stash of small, tasty food treats. Here's what you need to do:

1. Click.
2. Treat.
3. Repeat.

That's it. There are only a couple of competing provisos: try not to move your "treat hand" until after you've clicked, but deliver the treat as quickly as possible (within a second of the click). Finding a rhythm that keeps those two events close but distinct will make the click most meaningful to your dog and help unlock his/her exclusive focus on the treats.

Sweet little lunatic III

I wouldn't say my push to adopt "Zeke" was totally reckless, but in the mix of confused motives that drove me to overcome my family's skepticism, there was more than a dash of hubris. After seeing the remarkable headway that Barley and Kili had made in a few short weeks of clicker training, and after making noticeable progress with dogs at the shelter who appeared at first glance much more "behaviorally challenged" than Zeke, I had become smitten not only with a handsome pup but also with my nascent abilities as a trainer.

Even the most rational of us may be susceptible sometimes to magical thinking, and I have never been particularly rational when it comes to my relationship with non-human animals. All my life, I have entertained the fantasy that I could learn to speak with dogs, dolphins, eagles, wombats, elephants, and others (though my social ambitions have never extended as far as cockroaches or tapeworms). Clicker training looked to me like the golden key to the peaceable kingdom. Once we understood each other, we could all live together in perfect harmony, the naked and the furry, the crawling and the winged.

I had conveniently forgotten that the glorious web of interspecies relationships includes significant and not so peaceable distinctions like the one dividing predators from prey. In my enchantment with the prospect of mutual understanding, I had forgotten that, if you suddenly learned to speak "dog," one of the things you'd likely hear from your adorably hyper new adolescent kelpie mix is, "CAT!! MUST GET CAT!! AAAARGH!! CAT TOO HIGH! MUST VAULT OFF WINDOW SILL!! AARGH!! TRY AGAIN! FOILED AGAIN! TRY BETTER! NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER!!" I think that's a pretty accurate account of Zeke's internal monologue the first time he got loose in a room with Hops. We soon discovered that his antipathy for cats and squirrels was so strong that he would attack any trees or furniture that had once given his enemy safe harbor. (Pete has since wrapped protective chicken wire around the "criminal" fir and cedar in our back yard.)

Thus I learned yet again the value of humility. That old Greek lesson never seems to stick: keep your head down if you don't want the gods to notice and bop you one. Welcome to the great cosmic game of whack-a-mole!

On the upside, Zeke found his new name. "Pazzo" is Italian for crazy.

Sweet little lunatic II

As accommodating as Pete had been to previous expansions of our menagerie, I guessed that I might meet some resistance this time. I couldn't justify the addition of a third dog in any terms that weren't selfish. Yes, this pup needed a home, but at the time I couldn't imagine how he'd have a hard time finding one (or keeping it, more to the point). The truth is, if I had known then what I know now, it would have been still more difficult to convince Peter (or myself) that we should adopt him. I'd fallen in love. It was that simple and indefensible. When it comes to guys of any species, my sweet spot is at the intersection of terribly handsome and seriously silly. That was clearly the place where "Zeke" lived. But I had overestimated our collective ability to absorb an extra dose of chaos-- or underestimated the size of the dose. That's the story of, that's the glory of...

I tried to proceed responsibly. Pete's enthusiasm for the prospect of a bigger pack was meager to nonexistent, but he held his power of veto in reserve, at least until he could meet the guy. Given Kili's spotty history with other dogs (even with her best buddy, Barley), Zeke had to pass muster with her before we could seriously consider adopting him. I took her out to OHS for a date in the chip yard. Tanya Roberts, the head of the behavior and training department, met us there with Zeke. We kept both dogs on leash while they checked each other out from a distance.

Zeke was clearly more interested in Kili than vice-versa, and once they were free to roam the yard, he made all the advances, testing the outer limit of Kili's tolerance for his wiggly idiocies, and scampering off each time she stiffened and barked. But he quickly turned this into a comic flirtation, getting bolder with every pass and more antic with every retreat, until Kili finally succumbed to the spirit of the game, chasing him in figure eights around Tanya and me, then stopping up suddenly and barking him off again. Very much in spite of herself, she enjoyed the little fool of a pup. He was in!

If he could win Kili, I thought he could win anyone, so I was surprised and sorry the next day when Pete and Barley gave identical verdicts: meh. They loved me and would endure this new "adventure" if I dragged them into it, but they wouldn't pretend to think it was a good idea. Even before we learned what Zeke's third owner meant when he wrote on the intake form "likes to chase cats for fun," there were clouds over Zeke's homecoming and an understanding established that what followed from here would be my fault. Pete and Barley were both quite clear on that.

Sweet little lunatic

Yes, two dogs, two humans, and a cat make for a plenty interesting household. By the time I started volunteering last summer at the Oregon Humane Society (you see where this is going), Pete, Barley, Hops, Kili and I had all ambled along together for a little more than six years, riding out the rough stretches with only a few scars and white hairs to show for our trouble. (It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage.) Our equilibrium had held for an eon. Or at least an era-- depending on whether you're measuring by the span of dog and cat or human life. Those wee temporal scales had begun to haunt me, from the moment our normally sensitive vet had started sprinkling the word "senior" into discussions of the girls' health.

But the truth is that, if you're going to spend any time in an animal shelter, you had better be prepared to discover your upper limit for furry mayhem. In the years since we'd adopted Kili, I had made only a couple of joking references to "how nutty" it would be to have three dogs. Pete never laughed, he just gave me warning looks. The message in his eyes was perfectly legible: "Don't even think about going there." And I'm sure that if I had not decided finally to wave a white flag in the direction of all things animal, if I hadn't scoped out all the exits from "crazy dog lady" and found them blocked, I would have been better defended against another heart attack.

The boy looks wonderfully mellow in that photo, doesn't he? Ha. He had me fooled, too. When I first met "Zeke" at OHS, he was as wiggly and bright-eyed as a 10-month-old puppy should be, but in a raucous kennel he didn't say boo. He was shy but quick to warm-- he leaned against me when I sat down, and lay his flat little head in my lap. On a walk, he was excited but manageable. How in the world had three different homes all gone bust for him?