Are you running on clicker fuel?

Kay Laurence May 2010

It is reaching 15 years since clicker training popped over the UK horizon. This was an exciting but uncertain time in dog training, just getting hold of a clicker was a major achievement, and our only opportunity to see any clicker training was from a converted video costing an exorbitant amount. Don’t Shoot The Dog hinted at the potential and like many enquiring folk we propped open the book and gave it a go. We explored the internet and learned many of the academically based principles.

Dear Clover was my first victim. She was a result of designer breeding of the time, a cross between a Gordon and Collie, and features on many of our adverts (see top left). Her initialisation occurred on the breakfast toast with a clicking pen top. Sure enough, it worked. I followed the principles and began to teach her to go around in a circle: spin. What resulted was something that resembled a facial twitch as I didn’t understand that this particular species need to move its eyeballs to face the way they are going. So the face and the shoulder set off to the right, but the eyeballs stayed focussed on the toast. Seven years after this “baptism” she still demonstrated the same behaviour in the presence of toast.

This was a glimpse through a lighted doorway. Very tempting and I am now happy to say that I live wholly in that just-glimpsed room. I need to remind myself to regularly stop and check the furnishings and layout of the room. Has it expanded? Do I have more tools and strategies? Is there dust gathering in the corners?

We have held courses to teach folk about clicker training for over 10 years now. Initially the first few years we focussed on explaining people that there was such a system as clicker training and it bought a tremendous value to their teaching relationship with their dog. Over 455 people were certified in the first five years, with our Clicker Trainers Competency Assessment Programme (CAP).

Five years further on and the agenda is something different. Most folk with dogs have heard of clicker training. It features regularly on TV programmes and many dog training classes advertise it as part of their curriculum. In the early days there was a certain arrogance with the clicker purists regarding their techniques as vastly more superior than the mere clicker “users”. Heaven help you if you actually lured as well, there could be no greater sin.

I’m back on the same bus – but for a different reason. We get many enthusiastic trainers wanting to move forward to more advanced techniques and can show some excellent results on the behaviour they have taught, and taught well. But when asked to “free-shape” the response is often in the region of “not bothering with that”, considering it unnecessary or a waste of time.

At the other extreme there are people who will ONLY free-shape, and would never lure or entice behaviours. We also meet trainers with working dogs dismissing the use of the clicker because they don’t want “tricks” or the dog “throwing behaviours at them”. The usual anxiety of “why fix if it ain’t broke” still flourishes, particularly where the “unbroken” system took much hard work to learn and apply.

I teach the principles of clicker training without a clicker. We use the visual movement of the food hand as a marker. The core of clicker training is not the clicker, it is the mind-set of how you perceive your learner’s right to learn.

Should they have a choice? If you ask for a sit – should they be able choose to say “no”? Or is your cue still a command in your mind and you demand compliance? 

A clicker is a marker for communicating the behaviour that earned the subsequent reinforcer. For some animals that reinforcer will need to be on view to stimulate attempts – that may be considered luring. The reinforcer may be placed in a location that invites the desired behaviour. The same marker can communicate a subsequent punishment. It is just a marker. The more accurately you use it, for positive or negative outcomes, the more effective it is.

The procedure is based on a blend between the principles and acquiring good mechanical skills. If the focus is only on the mechanical skills this can have a nasty side effect of diverting the training towards a mechanical process. At times a mechanical process is useful, but I would never advocate it as the normal approach. When training my dogs there is a large slice of relationship in the process, and this involves mirroring energy, have empathy and expressing joy at success. But without good mechanical skills the principles will not have a chance to get off the ground.

I have every sympathy for people beginning clicker training these days. There are 1001 different books, websites and advisory groups telling you which way to face, which way to build, and what colour to paint it. The umbrella term “clicker training” covers the same vast territory as “canine”, and you know as I do, that one canine is not the same as another. I have seen many varieties of clicker training, and many of those variations would have made sure my view of the “lighted doorway” would have stayed shut. I would have passed by not realising that what I was watching was not showing me the real power behind its use. 

My training has evolved over the 15 years. I use luring and shaping with equal enthusiasm. I coach with  prompts and use continual reinforcement where my learners need it. I stopped using extinction bursts, and I don’t use a variable schedule. I reinforce all success with a plateful of different reinforcers. Sometimes I stimulate a behaviour through changing my energy, sometimes I stimulate a behaviour through mirroring. I often attach a cue through the new cue old cue process, but also attach a cue during the behaviour, not before it.

I always believe that the dog has a choice to leave, I would only train on a lead for safety reasons. I believe that the right mind set leaves the learner and the teacher with a sense of joy and achievement. If that is not happening for you, then your mind set and perhaps the principles you are applying are not as they should be. When clicker training is in full flight it should leave you energised, in awe, and looking forward to the next slice of chocolate pleasure.

The real power of clicker training, the fuel that gives it wings, is the freedom of choice. Too much choice can defeat the reinforcing value of choice. Forty three items on a restaurant menu just leaves you exhausted trying to make a decision. But have the choice to use you left paw or right paw is powerful to the animal.

Luring is fine, if you balance it with some free shaping. Free-shaping is fine if you restrict, not overwhelm, the choices a learner needs to make. Extinction bursts may be fine, but there is a risk of relationship damage if frustration becomes the normally associated emotion. Variable schedules work exceedingly well with animals that are gamblers and need to feed frequently over their waking hours, but often with single, regular meal beasties this can collapse on you spectacularly. Withholding information, (the click) may not impinge on your relationship, but silence when in conversation: your attempts being ignored, can shoot down the trust between you.

I hope in another 15 years we learn to recognise that the clicker may be the road which directed your travel, but the landscape is entirely based on your own mind set. If you want to enjoy a journey of ever changing views, rich with colour and interest, then you may need to look wider than your current view.

PO Box 13, Chipping Campden, Glos. GL55 6WX. 0(+44)1386 430189

22 February 2012