Posts filed under ‘Books & DVDs’
2017 Book List
- What The Dog Knows is the story of a German Shepherd who becomes a professional cadaver dog. Absolutely fascinating if you are interested in how sniffer dogs are trained. With pieces of dead human bodies.
- The Education of Will is by renowned dog behaviorist Patricia McConnell. This is a heartfelt memoir about trauma and the healing process – for both humans and dogs.
- Considerations for the City Dog is a for people like me who live in urban environments where there are dogs everywhere. This book covers management, training, everything to help you and your dog avoid stress! By Melissa McCue-McGrath whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Boston this year.
- We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves has nothing to do with dogs. But if you are interested in animal behavior and human-animal relationships, please read this. A very profound and stunning novel that I read from start to finish on the plane – which was not a good place to cry my eyes out. Hint: Chimpanzees. Then go watch the new Jane Goodall movie.
- Pit Bull: The Battle Over An American Icon is an exceptionally well-researched and riveting book about how dog breeds become cultural symbols of heroism or criminality. In different periods of history, there has always been a scapegoated dog breed. If you are thinking of adopting a pit bull, please also check out The Pit Bull Life by Linda Lombardi. (One of my illustrations is in it!).
- The Dog Merchants is very eye opening. Here is a book written for everyday people who adopt or buy dogs, about how the pet industry works. The takeaway message is that there are good and bad rescues; there are good and bad breeders, and consumers could educate themselves or where our dogs really come from.
- Science Comics: Dogs: From Predator to Protector is an educational graphic novel with a hefty amount of information about dog origins, domestication, genetics… everything you want to know about The Dog is here. Co-written by two canine scientists I follow on Twitter, Julie Hecht and Mia Cobb, with fun and dynamic art. In a similar vein, I also recommend the Biology of Dogs online course by the Institute of Canine Biology. (I am in the middle of this course right now)
- SOS Dog: The Purebred Dog Hobby Re-examined is written by Edith and Johan Gallant who used to breed and show schnauzers before they starting living with and sharing their knowledge about The Africanis – the landrace dogs of South Africa. This is a book about the health and welfare issues in dog breeding for conformation shows. Edith helped me out when I was designing the Africanis for my map.
- An Eye For a Dog: An Illustrated Guide to Judging Purebred Dogs is a trip. I bought this book because I was researching dog breeds. The book is full of images that test your ability to see subtle differences in physical structures within the same breed, and judge these by AKC breed standards. You learn to see dogs the way dog nerds see dogs.
- Million Dollar Dog Brand by Nichole Sears, a marketing coach for petpreneurs. After all these years working as an artist for dog businesses, I am finally going to learn how to define and market my brand. I am doing a workshop with the author next year. Wish me luck 😃
- Only Have Eyes For you: Exploring Canine Research by Linda Case. Myths about dog nutrition, training, and other issues get debunked by science.
- What It’s Like To Be A Dog by Gregory Berns. Because Patricia McConnell recommended it!
Did you read any good dog/animal books this year?
That time of year
It’s that Clicker Expo time of year and I am not going. Sigh – I will miss Sarah Owings, Emily Larlham and Susan Friedman again! Even so, my brain seems to have kicked into WANT-TO-LEARN-NEW-THINGS mode! Thank goodness for Tawzer DVD sales.
DVDs on my Watch List this week:
1. Sue Sternberg – dog-dog body language – Watching this one for drawing reference.
2. Patient Like The Chipmunks – So glad this is on YouTube! Watched this historical gem a few nights ago. Warning: Different animals doing cute amazing things but I would rate this video a zero on the ‘warm and fuzzy’ scale. 🙂 This is the cold, emotion-less face of Science, Enterprise and Efficiency in animal training… How it all began, starting with BF Skinner and pigeons shaped to guide missiles; critters in boxes performing 4-5 hour shifts…. The point is that the Brelands and Baileys are still so inspiring and deserve to be better known for being way ahead of their time in championing humane animal training methods. Quote Bob Bailey: “Patience and preparedness is better than brute force”.
3. Roger Abrantes – I have only watched Disc 1 of 3 so far and I am loving it. Quote: These DVDs are a “Review of the Principles of Behaviorism and Operant Conditioning spiced with the view of an Ethologist”. Roger Abrantes is fascinating to listen to and to observe and I think this might be the first dog training DVD I have ever watched where the presenter is actually interacting with and moving around with a dog (and their humans) rather than talking straight to camera the whole session. He also very clearly defines the words he uses. eg, Signal vs Cue vs Command; and I like that he says “Inhibitors” instead of “Punishers”.
4. Grisha Stewart – there is a full series of DVDs (with covers I illustrated!), and I am starting with the “Problem Prevention” instalment tomorrow 🙂
Will add thoughts later….
P.S. I have registered a domain name for Boogie’s blog! It is now http://www.boogiebt.com
Ear Work
Every time I bring out the ear medication bottle (even before I touch or look at the bottle), Boogie KNOWS what is going to happen. He can read me like a book. He makes himself very small, like a turtle, and creeps very low to the ground, slinking away under a chair or into his crate.
I have tried counter conditioning with treats. Things went well (the bottle ceased to be ‘scary’) up until the moment that he realized that liquid dripped inside his ear… and then he stopped wanting food and would back off as soon as he knew what would eventually happen. So I always ended up administering ear drops “by force”, while Boogie endured the ordeal. And then off he would go, escaping to shake off, before returning for the consolation treat.
I have started watching Lori Stevens’s Tellington TTouch For Dogs DVD, and yesterday I decided to try something new.
Of course,as always, Boogie predicted the worst so he pulled his ears back really tight as soon as I touched them. I didn’t pick up the ear meds. First I did some touches on his head and around the outside ear area with the back of my hand (Chimp TTouch). Then I used my whole hand on top of his head to move the base of his ears around, before doing direct ear strokes… and soon I could feel his ears and his whole body relaxing.
(By the way, I had already done these same TTouches the night before, and I knew Boogie enjoyed them, so it wasn’t like a completely foreign experience).
When he seemed sufficiently relaxed, I added the ear drops into his infected ear, massaged this in, and waited for him to escape.
Miraculously, Boogie did not move. He just stayed where he was and looked at me, so I continued doing slides on both his ears and massaging the base of his ears. When I removed my hands to see if he had had enough, he turned around to look at me again: “Why are you stopping?”
It was pretty cool.
I was ready to gloat but then things did not go so well this morning. I went through the same steps as yesterday. I did Noah’s March along his back and some Chimp TTouches around his face and ears… I stroked his ears until his head was resting on the couch and to me, he looked perfectly calm and relaxed. I stopped from time to time to make sure he was still fine… he was.
Then as soon as I unscrewed the ear drops bottle cap, Boogie jumped off the couch and ran away into the bedroom.
I went to get him and slowly he returned to the couch, with not his usual sad-faced ears-pinned-back look that was usually associated with ear medications. Boogie’s ears were up and his eyes were bright. He looked at me, looked at the ear drops bottle on the table, looked at me…
“Really, mom?”
THIS DOG IS NO FOOL.
TTouch – “Walking In balance” DVD
The only Black Friday Sale I took advantage of last month was the one offered by Tawzer Dog. I got Lori Steven’s TTouch Walking In Balance DVD and last week I finished watching all 3 discs. Lori Stevens is fantastic and the seminar was so interesting and enlightening that now I wish I had ordered the first TTouch DVD too!
Last year I had tried to read Linda Tellington-Jones’s TTouch book after Boogie’s intro TTouch session with Cynde. To be honest, it was hard to take in and retain all this information from the book without having more tangible experiences. I am the sort of person who needs to see and feel how something is done (vs only reading about it) – and watching Lori Stevens’ DVD has rekindled my desire to learn more about TTouch. Also – the fact that TTouch was developed by Linda Tellington-Jones from Feldenkrais is something that I find really exciting. I have been obsessed with Feldenkrais all year and have been doing ATM lessons (ATM =”awareness through movement”) at home, a few times a week.
If anyone is interested, here is the Frank Wildman ATM lesson (45 minutes) you can check out – ‘Folding Your Body With Ease ‘ https://www.dropbox.com/s/52hs6ip3cdhotpq/Vol1_lesson_one.mp3
To quote Lori Stevens, TTouch and Feldenkrais are both “neuromuscular retraining programs”.
In using non-habitual movements and body work, we reduce tension patterns in our bodies, we gain awareness, we loosen our joints, experience improvement in posture and gait, which in turn, lead to emotional well being, greater confidence and better physical performance. All these things influence behavior, which is why TTouch is also categorized as a “dog training method” that is humane and force-free.
I totally get the emotional benefits of better posture and gait, and the force-free aspect of this sort of training, based on my own experiences with Feldenkrais. I still relish the ‘magical’ DIY results even though there is a scientific explanation as to why this all works. It’s amazing to me that I can eliminate pain from my own body and expand my range of movement just by attentively, doing a series of gentle movements on a yoga mat that do NOT in any way involve physical effort or discomfort. No stretching, no muscle manipulations, no “holding” of poses… I always feel amazing afterwards – taller, more stable, more flexible, more alert, pain-free etc. and I feel more motivated to work out and do physical things.
To quote Feldenkrais practitioners: We are learning to use our bodies more effectively to move effortlessly. We are training skill, not will. The skill is proprioception.
I keep all this in mind when I think of what I can do for Boogie with TTouch.
The focus of the Walking In Balance DVD is really ‘leash walking’ techniques and how to stay connected to your dog. In the first disc, there is an overview and intro including a Feldenkrais ATM lesson for humans to do (yes I did this! It was cool) so that we know how ‘improved proprioception’ feels. Then Lori demonstrated some important TTouches on fake and real dogs: Noah’s March, Zig Zag, Python Lifts, & Tail Work. I loved that she shared details on the amount of pressure to use, how slow the movements should be, where to pause, how to move to the next spot, how not to go over the same areas… etc.
As I was watching, I practiced on Boogie and took notes. Boogie LOVED the TTouches so much that he left his bed and snuggled up to me on the couch for more. Some rough sketches:
According to Lori, senior dogs tend to lose “back end proprioception”. *edit* Dogs naturally put 60% of their weight on their front end so that as they get older their back ends atrophy. When dogs pull on the leash, this is not only damaging to the thyroid and trachea, the dog can also develop unhealthy patterns of “leaning”, making things worse. And so in using TTouches and Wraps we can sensitize dogs to more “hind-end awareness” and in so doing, correct gait issues.
Likewise for dogs who do agility and reactive dogs. The DVD showed some footage of an agility dog whose jumping movements improved after experiencing a Wrap.
“We usually see a change in behavior when there are changes in the way a dog moves.”
Boogie had experienced a half-wrap last summer but I am not sure if it made any difference. Perhaps this is because he is usually always wearing some sort of harness so he is used to having “stuff” wrapped around his body so perhaps the Wrap didn’t feel “non-habitual” enough? Or perhaps it wasn’t helpful to be wearing a Wrap on such a hot day. Now that we are in winter, I will try this again. I have some bandages lying around somewhere.
Another TTouch method demo-ed on the DVD is the Balance Leash with 2 points of contact- which to me, looks quite complicated. I had to sketch it out to memorize what goes where.
*edited 12/31/2013
The purpose of having 2 points of contact is for clearer communication or clearer leash cues. With 2 points, the dog can sense much earlier when we want to change direction than if we had one point of leash contact. In the DVD, Lori demo-ed this with humans on leash. With one point of contact, when we turn, the dog would feel more like he was being pulled. “It takes two to pull”. We pull, the dog pulls.
Quote Lori: In an ideal world, dogs would be wearing harnesses with front and back attachments, not collars.
In TTouch, we “stroke the leash” to let our dog know when we want to slow down, turn around, or stop. Now I know where the “mime pulling” in BAT comes from! 🙂
Boogie has not worn a collar in years… he wears a Freedom harness and these days, only using the back attachment and a one-clip leash. I could in fact configure a Balance Leash using the back ring only, by having the leash go around his chest…
Note: A good harness should not restrict shoulder or front leg movements nor be too tight. On the DVD, Lori went through different types of harnesses and a few different two-ring configurations for harnesses, some including side rings. I will need to revisit the DVD to remember what these different kinds of harnesses are.
There was so much more information on the DVD (“Labyrinth”, Walking on different surfaces, how to work with reactive dogs etc) that I can’t summarize everything in this one blog post. I definitely need to go back and watch segments again and refer also to the DogRead Yahoo Group postings which had more detailed discussions and examples. (See postings from Dec 1-15, “Tellington TTouch Techniques: Walking in Balance With Your Dog” Lori Stevens)
A final memo: Before taking our dog out the door for a walk (when he is usually all hyped from being cooped up indoors all day), it is a good idea to have 5 minutes of Calm Connectedness. TTouch is a good way to stay connected and bond with your dog before venturing out.
Thank you, Lori!
Related links:
- Advent calendar with TTouch info
- Ttouch on YouTube (please recommend more links!)
- Photos and videos from Boogie TTouch session with Cynde Van Vleet (last summer)
- Lori Stevens’ website
- I love this blog by a Feldenkrais practitioner Todd Hargrove – www.bettermovement.org.
DISCLAIMER: The sketches in this blog post are rough visual notes that I created after watching the DVD. I did these sketches for fun/for myself because I remember and process concepts better when I draw them. You are welcome to use and share them but please note that they are NOT official TTouch handouts. – Lili 🙂
Home from Clicker Expo
After three full days of Clicker Expo, a total of 14 seminars, half a notebook full of notes and scribbles, my brain is so full I don’t even know how to start writing about this experience. I may need a couple of weeks to process and streamline everything!
I attended my first Clicker Expo 2 years ago (you can read about it here and here) and this time I went all out and registered for the full event. I wanted to learn new things, be inspired, meet up with my clients, make new contacts, listen to expert trainers like Ken Ramirez and Kathy Sdao, meet Dr. Susan Friedman in person (she ordered multiple copies of my poster!) and sit in on Sarah‘s and Irith‘s shorts presentations, which were really great. I must say that even though I was in the 2% of attendees who don’t work professionally with animals – I didn’t at all feel overwhelmed or lost.
Clicker Expo was everything I hoped for, including the joy of seeing doggy “down-stay” butts every time I visited the hotel’s ladies’ restroom.
photo by Cindy Bennet Martin
I could write a day-by-day review and this would turn into an epic 3 or 4 part blog post but for now, let me direct you to this Flickr Set where I have posted some photos and quick notes.
Some topics that I want to think/write more about and do illustrations for….
- Anthropomorphism & Mechanomorphism (Karen Pryor)
- Classical Conditioning in relation to Clicker Training (Kathy Sdao, Susan Friedman)
- Dealing with Unwanted Behavior in the Least Intrusive Way (Ken Ramirez)
- TAGTeach – Clicker Training for human beings (Theresa McKeon, Irith Bloom)
I enjoyed every single talk and Learning Lab at Clicker Expo but the highlight for me personally was Kay Laurence’s “Targeting” Lab on the final day, which was amazing to watch. I am so in awe of Kay Laurence’s skills, her sensitivity to the dog, and her way of articulating reasons for every little training choice that she makes. There’s something about seeing a LIVE training session that can’t be beat by watching a YouTube video or DVD.
And after those three intense days of learning and meeting people, it was so good to be back home with Boogie, who is a refreshing change from all the “well-behaved” dogs at Clicker Expo…
Boogie in his new tiny teacup doggie bed.
Boogie unstuffs his new bed.
In other news, I have started reading Monica Segal’s K9 Kitchen: Your Dog’s Diet. The Truth Behind The Hype. It is a fascinating read but I am now even more aware of how much conflicting info there is about dog nutrition floating around… for instance, the “grain-free, potato-free” diet that is said to prevent yeast infections. See this earlier blog post.
According to Monica Segal, cutting carbs out of a dog’s diet won’t make any difference to yeast growth.
“A very popular myth circulating on the Internet claims that yeast feeds on carbohydrates…. There isn’t a direct link between carbohydrates or sweet vegetables and yeast. The focus should be on eliminating the food culprit whatever it may be” (usually proteins or grains or supplements)
She also adds that grains can be a GOOD THING for some dogs (better coat)… so long as they are thoroughly cooked to be digestible. I am particularly interested in the chapter on recipes and on how to prepare a home cooked diet that has the correct balance of nutrients…
More later…
National Train Your Dog Month – My dog book reading List
Will I ever get through this list?
1. The Science of Consequences by Susan M. Schneider. I am about 30% of the way through this book and enjoying it so far. It’s like seeing the world with new eyes through the filter of Behavioral Science (Operant Conditioning) and how this philosophical approach applies to genetics, evolution, behavior modification in humans and all animals large and small, etc. I am very chuffed that Susan Schneider wrote a blog post about my Animal Training poster.
2. The Misunderstood Dog by Jordan Rothman (my illustrations are in this book!) There’s a sale going on this month! So far I have skimmed through the first few chapters and can’t wait to read through it properly. I promise I will post a blog review. The Misunderstood Dog is like an easier-to-read, friendlier, jargon-free version of Jean Donaldson’s “The Culture Clash”, and it is written for dog owners rather than dog training professionals.
3. 25 Dog and Puppy Training Tips e-book by Emily Larlham. I am a big Emily Larlham/Kikopup fan. I can’t wait to read this. *Does anyone know of a good program that can convert PDFs to Kindle Format without messing up all the photos? The e-book is a large PDF file with lots of photos that got lost when I emailed it to my Kindle.
4. Decoys and Aggression by Stephen Mackenzie. This book was recommended to me on a dog training forum. I believe this is a book on teaching police dogs to PERFORM AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIORS (in a humane way) and therefore has some very insightful offerings on how to read and shape dog body language . Also liking this video by Steve White, another police dog trainer whose DVDs I would love to watch but cannot afford.
5. K9 Kitchen: The Truth Behind The Hype by Monica Segal. Not a training-related book but one about nutrition. I think I will start cooking for Boogie again soon. *Does anyone have good tips on using a Dehydrator to make pet treats? eg. do you cook the meat first before dehydrating it?
6. Understanding Cat Behavior by Roger Tabor. Not a dog book. I ordered this because I need a cat book for drawing reference, one with lots of photos showing various body language poses and expressions. Unfortunately, some of this information might be very outdated. Just take a look at this little blurb on dog training –
So it’s not OK to boss around and scold a cat because it will damage your bond and mess up your cat, but it’s OK to do this with dogs? While it’s great that nowadays many dog-lovers are promoting and teaching the world about modern force-free HUMANE dog training methods, I wonder if this info is also getting through to the non dog people…. And btw, are there any CURRENT books on Cat body language/behavior/training?
Seeing that it’s National Dog Training Month, I am learning to use a MannersMinder!
To be honest, it looked a little intimidating until I watched the instructional DVD which goes into a lot of detail about training games, the correct order in which the games should be taught, and how to work the machine settings. It’s quite loud too. When you press the remote control (to dispense the treat), there is a loud BEEP followed by a loud whirring sound before the treat plops out.
Ah… my scaredy Boogie dog. As soon as I put the MannersMinder down on the floor, I could tell that Boogie was scared of it. It wasn’t even turned on! I put a treat in the bowl; Boogie looked at it and backed off. He would not go near the machine. He went to his bed, instead. After some coaxing, Boogie ate the treat out of the bowl and then everything was fine after that. He learned very quickly how to make the “BEEP and TREAT” happen. So far I have been training “Eye contact”. Tomorrow we do “targeting”. Now I need to find some treats that are of consistent size so that they don’t get stuck…
This is going to be an adventure! 🙂
Happy Holidays!
Apologies for the long silences between posts and thank you to everyone who has left comments (advice, tips, personal stories etc) on this blog, particularly with regards to Boogie’s skin issues. I have been out-of-town; now I am happy to be back home and snuggling with the Boogs again. He is less itchy now that the weather has cooled down. His coat is still very thin with the same bald patches, and his poor skin has been dry, flaky, and dandruffy.
I am trying a few new things:
- No chicken in his diet at all. He has been eating lamb and/or fish-based meals. It has only been 1 week… I can’t tell if there is any difference.
- Adding Pet Kelp to his food. 3 weeks, now. Can’t tell if this is making any difference with his skin, but his poop is looking very good!
- Virgin Coconut Oil massage, every other day <– THIS is making a difference! Skin is noticeably less dry.
- New Year Resolution: Make pet treats with the new dehydrator (which is still in its box)
I am determined to do anything to avoid more vet visits & antibiotics! In fact, I took advantage of Monica Segal‘s recent Black Friday Sale and ordered a dietary consultation for Boogie in the new year. I need help figuring out what foods (if any) that Boogie’s system may not be tolerant of.
Meanwhile…
Check out Jordan Rothman’s new book The Misunderstood Dog, with my illustrations. I would describe it as a simpler, easier-to-read version of “The Culture Clash”, written for dog owners. The Boston on the cover is the author’s dog. Here is the Amazon.com page.
Order a snazzy little name tag that I designed for blanketID. A percentage of sales goes to Boston Buddies rescue. I think this would make an awesome Xmas gift. They come in red or blue, and small or large sizes. The photos that I have of Boogie wearing this blanketID tag on his collar are kinda blurry…. Will try again later. ORDER HERE
Who is going to Clicker Expo in San Francisco next month? I would love to meet up! I know names but not faces, so if you recognize me, please say hi! I will be there for the full three days. First time that I am staying for the whole expo and very excited!
HAPPY HOLIDAYS! – Lili & Boogie x
Catching up. Notes about Behavior/Training.
It has been a crazy month – major computer issues, health issues, catching up on a huge backlog of work – and poor Boogie’s Blog has been neglected. I don’t have time to go into too many details, so this blog post is a quick summary of stuff that I have found interesting.
1. Two great books!
First of all, I am plugging Grisha Stewart’s Ahimsa Dog Training Manual – I am doing new illustrations for the next edition! 🙂
Paul Chance’s First Course in Applied Behavior Analysis is about modifying behavior in people, not dogs, but the philosophical premise and methods are the same as what are used in modern dog training methods, and I enjoyed learning about the same concepts in “human contexts”. Some quotes:
ABA is concerned with using environmental events to change behavior in desirable ways.
Much of the time, a behavior problem means either that a behavior occurs too often or that it does not occur often enough. The task of the parent, teacher, manager or therapist is to increase or decrease the frequency of the behavior.The chief difference between the people who live inside mental hospitals and those who live outside of them is not that we never behave as they do but that we behave as they do less often than they do.
One of the great things about ABA is that is focuses on what people can do rather than on a label or on some mysterious, unseen psychological disorder.
Please note that reinforcement strengthens BEHAVIOR, not PEOPLE. Everyone slips up now and then and speaks of reinforcing a person, as in, “John was studying very hard so I reinforced him”. You don’t increase the strength of people with reinforcement; you increase the strength of their behavior.
Some people think that people with Ph.D’s go around thinking up new terms for everyday words just so what they say will sound more sophisticated. There may be some truth to that, but the word reinforcer is not just a synonym for reward. Here’s the essential difference: Rewards are defined by consensus; reinforcers are defined by results. If an event strengthens or maintains the behavior it follows, it’s a reinforcer; if it doesn’t it isn’t a reinforcer. There is no other defining characteristic of a reinforcer.
This is an important point; one students often miss. People often get the impression that a behaviorist is someone who carries a bag of reinforcers about and whenever behavior needs strengthening, he reaches into the bag and hands out reinforcers. The essence of behavior analysis is not handing out reinforcers but analyzing the effects of antecedents and consequences on behavior. That includes identifying consequences that are reinforcing.
2. The DogRead Yahoo Group
I am subscribed to the DogRead group by email. Every month a new book/author is featured readers can interact directly with authors, ask questions etc. This week, the amazing Kathy Sdao is on DogRead. Kathy Sdao used to train dolphins for the Navy, and I almost included this example in my poster. I love Kathy Sdao’s response to this reader question:“is it always possible to use only positive, gentle reinforcing training methods with dogs?”
My experience has taught me that we tend to presume a false correlation between reliable behavior & the use of aversives. IOW, it seems to make intuitive sense that if the animal “must” do something really important (e.g., locate a bomb, track down a criminal, guide a blind person), we have to use some sort of force to teach the animal he doesn’t have a choice.
Yet, I believe we revert to coercion and force when our skills at implementing structured, clever, careful reinforcement procedures run out. The dolphins I trained for the US Navy reliably located deep-moored mines (as much as 600 feet down), reported the mine’s presence to their trainer on a small boat, then carried a heavy packet of explosives back down to the mine, attached this in a quite specific location on the mooring cable, then swam back to the small boat and leapt onboard for the long ride back to their pier-side pens. This behavior chain was long, cognitively and physically challenging, performed in the presence of huge distractions (including live food-fish swimming all around the work site), and ended with each dolphin choosing to go back to captivity.
It is beyond the scope of this discussion of my book (Plenty in Life is Free) to further discuss details of this training, except for the critical fact that we did not use “corrections.” We obtained accurate reliable real-world performance through the use of careful design of the training environments and tons of R+ over the course of many months of training. Punishment was not part of the program.
When folks say “yeah, but those were dolphins and they’re really smart,” I respond that dogs are every bit as smart. It’s just that their trainers are more often seduced into believing that punishment is necessary to teach “the important stuff.”
My affiliation (as an occasional consultant) with Guide Dogs for the Blind (GDB) over the past few years has allowed me to see how amazingly effective positive-reinforcement training can be when done by skilled and creative trainers. Their implementation of clicker-training over the past ~five years has been amazing to watch. Their results have been so impressive that guide-dog organizations all over the world are seeking GDB’s advice on how to modify their own programs.
Hanging by my desk is this quote, from one of my all-time favorite books, Dr. Murray Sidman’s Coercion & Its Fallout (2001):
“An overworked and incorrect bit of folk wisdom pronounces the carrot to be of no avail unless backed up by the stick. But the carrot can do the job all by itself.”
… which is the point of this poster illustration –
[click on pic for more info]
Bloggers Unite for Pet Rescue & Mall Dogs
HOW CAN YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
- Blog about a Dog Rescue related topic on July 23rd, 2012
- Add one of the badges below to your blog and help spread the word
- Donate to a local dog rescue organization
- Foster a dog
- Volunteer at a local shelter or rescue organization
- Share this post across all forms of social media and encourage others to participate!
I could blog about my rescue dog Boogie, but we’ll take a little break from Boogie for now. I want everyone to know about a new documentary film project called MALL DOGS.
The film is by Jessi Badami, whom I met at Clicker Expo last year. We sat next to each other in the Kay Laurence seminar, chatted, exchanged business cards, and kept in touch over the year.
Jessi is amazingly prolific – she writes, she acts, she makes films, she rescues dogs, and she was going to enroll in the Karen Pryor Academy this year but changed her mind and decided to concentrate all her energy instead on making this documentary about Lucky Paws, a very unique and successful pet shelter in Albuquerque, NM, that is located inside a mall.
You can read more about this film on: the Dogparent.com website and on the film’s Kickstarter page.
Watch this video:
In short, MALL DOGS is an uplifting rescue story and I can’t wait to work on it. I will be creating illustrations and animations.
However, the Mall Dogs project can not happen if it doesn’t receive full Kickstarter funding in 30 days! Please donate. You can pledge any amount from as little as one dollar. Higher donations come with bigger and better premiums! Then, please share this blog post, tweet it, facebook it, pin it, do your social media thing.
“Mall Dogs” – Visit the Kickstarter page
Coming soon to Boogie’s blog:
- My experience of Nicole Wilde’s seminar on “Separation Anxiety” & “Dog-Dog Play”
- A review of the new “Tough Love” film
Pattern Games DVD
Leslie McDevitt’s PATTERN GAMES DVD was my birthday present from our trainer Sarah. I finally got chance to watch it last night, taking notes as I went along.
I broke down each game into “Click Points” and “Tag Points” on my notepad..
I already had a copy of Leslie McDevitt’s book Control Unleashed®: Creating a Focused and Confident Dog but I hadn’t read past Chapter 2. The only CU game that I was already familiar with is Look At That (LAT), similar to BAT Stage 1. In LAT, the dog is rewarded for looking at a trigger + reorienting to the handler over many repetitions.
On the Pattern Games DVD, there are 6 games – explained with live demo footage – and they look unbelievably simple. According to Leslie McDevitt, any dog who is comfortable on leash can play these games. No other prerequisite training required. From what I can see, the Pattern Games are about maintaining a fast and consistent rhythm in clicker training, and it is this rhythm that gives the dog a sense of safety (and something to focus on!), and keeps both human and dog strongly connected even when there are distractions present.
A few days ago, Sarah, Boogie and I went for a big long walk around our neighborhood and Sarah demonstrated Pattern Game #2 – Take three steps forward, click and drop a treat behind your feet. 1,2,3, Treat…. 1,2,3, Treat… 1,2,3, Treat… repeat. This particular game has nothing to do with what the dog is doing, and is primarily for the dog handler to practice getting into a rhythm which is harder than it sounds if your eyes, hands and feet are not totally coordinated. I found myself way too consciously counting my steps (1-2-3) then fumbling for the treat, forgetting to click, etc.
On the DVD, there are two live demos per game, and in the second demo, another person shows up in the training scenario and Leslie McDevitt demonstrates how to incorporate the other person into the game (Look At That) so that what is potentially a trigger or distraction becomes part of an already familiar and fun rule structure for the dog. And this is particularly useful if the dog is likely to freak out around new dogs/people or sudden environmental changes.
Sharing here a short video clip of Boogie at his favorite window. That’s one of his beds right next to it. Remember when I covered all my windows with film? I had to leave one window uncovered because I need to breathe, and this is the window that Boogie continues to stare and bark out of. It’s not a big deal, because I have sort of managed to teach him to look outside and turn back to me. Almost like LAT. Cue: “Boogie, who’s there?”
The world outside is always a very fascinating place….
Boogie's blog 