[nagdu] What's up with all the scavenging anyhow?

Thu Jul 2 12:57:41 UTC 2015

Debbie,

I'm kind of confused by your message.  You said that you wouldn't use 
clicker training all day every day, but could see it's usefulness for some 
specific things.  From this statement, I don't think you understand what 
clicker training is and what it isn't.  Perhaps that's why you are upset by 
many of the messages about new training methods?

In a very, very, brief summary...clicker training is just that...training. 
It isn't meant to be used all day every day.  It is meant as a method to 
train the dog or person or dolphin to do something specific.  Successive 
approximations are used to teach this.  So if you wanted to teach a dog to 
pick up the newspaper, you would click when the dog glances at the paper, 
when the dog takes a step toward it, when the dog sniffs it, when the dog 
nudges it with  his nose and continuing on until the dog has caught on the 
the behavior.  When the dog is going over to the paper each time it is 
presented, you no longer click for just a glance.  The dog has to do a 
little more,  each time to get the click and the reward.

Food is generally used as the reinforcer that follows the click.  Food is 
used because it is universal and fast.  You can use play or petting, praise 
or other reinforcers, but they take more time and aren't as valuable to 
every dog.  For simplicity and speed, food is the preferred reinforcer.  It 
takes me .5 seconds to get a treat to a dog and .25 for the dog to eat it. 
I can get in 20 clicks and treats in a minute or two.  If I used petting or 
play it would take me 10 seconds to deliver something meaningful and still 
longer for the dog to refocus his attention back on the learning exercise. 
When I am training something with the clicker, I don't typically talk to the 
dog.  It's just click and treat, click and treat as quickly as I can in a 
short amount of time.  The dog is only distracted by my talking and 
unnecessary body movements because he is intensely focused in on the mental 
activity of problem solving the situation.

Dogs who are trained with the clicker know what it is and what it means.  A 
dog fairly new to the clicker knows that click means treat.  these are the 
dogs who may be distracted by the treats because that's the exciting part. 
After a while though, the mental problem solving of the clicker game becomes 
incredibly rewarding for the dog.  These are the truly savvy clicker dogs. 
You can teach a clicker savvy dog complex behaviors in minutes instead of 
days or weeks.  You are actually teaching the dog to proactively think and 
to solve puzzles.  I suppose it could be considered to be fluent in the 
language of clicker.

Here's the thing that I think a lot of people are missing though, once the 
behavior is learned solidly, you don't continue to use the clicker.  The 
behavior is already trained, there is no need to continue to train it.  The 
treats are phased out.  It might be helpful to randomly reinforce a behavior 
with treats, for a dog who struggles with a particular behavior or something 
that you are particularly concerned about, but treats are certainly not 
given willy nilly for the lifetime of the dog.  If a dog won't work unless 
he is being fed every two feet, this isn't clicker training, it's bribery.

Monty will be 8 in a couple of months.  I haven't carried treats with me 
when I am working him for several years.  He still works beautifully. 
Sometimes in the winter when we all are stir crazy from being in the house, 
I will get out the clicker and teach him something new.  He still remembers 
and still knows how to engage in the training.   He does not scavenge or try 
to take food off the table at a restaurant or any other horrid thing.  There 
have been many times we have been walking along and my son or husband will 
tell me, "he just took you around half a sandwich on the sidewalk".   I've 
had Monty since he was about 10 months old or so.  He used to jump on the 
counters, pick up everything including dead birds, snakes, grasshoppers and 
I don't even want to think about what else.    He is an incredibly food 
motivated dog, which I used to my advantage.

Clicker training is not synonymous with treat dispensing.  I think this is a 
large misunderstanding.  clicker training is a specific training method and 
just like with every other training method, once the dog is trained, you 
don't continue to badger the dog with training that same behavior.  A 
properly clicker trained dog should work for the enjoyment of the work or to 
please his person.  If the dog will only work for the treats, then either 
the training has gone terribly, terribly wrong or the dog isn't meant for 
that job.

Leash correction based training does work.  It works faster up front, while 
clicker training is slower in the beginning.  However leash correction 
training has it's limits,  because you are eliminating all the behaviors you 
don't want and what is left are the behaviors you do want.  Like I said 
before, dogs get that click means treat right away, that's actually classic 
conditioning, but the part that they can influence when they earn the click 
comes a little slower.  Once the dog understands that they are in control of 
earning rewards the learning speeds up exponentially.  Also because the dog 
is actively offering new behaviors, many things can be taught with a clicker 
that cannot be taught with leash correction based training.  Things like 
yawning, wagging, distance work, off leash behaviors and the like simply 
cannot be taught with leash corrections.

I think the guide dog schools teach their students to use leash corrections 
because it is an easy concept to understand.  Do something bad get a leash 
correction, that's pretty straightforward.  Someone who has never been 
around dogs can pick up this concept in seconds.  However clicker training 
is not like that.  There is a lot more knowledge base needed to understand 
and employ the training principles.  I have talked to people who have 
attended the TSE  clicker intro lecture and they don't understand clicker 
training.  I don't actually know what is in the TSE lecture, but I imagine 
it is accurate information, but people are not coming away with an accurate 
understanding at all.   Same thing with GDB.  I have read their clicker 
lecture materials on the website and it's all good and accurate info.  Then 
I talk to GDB grads and hear stories from this list and it is very clear to 
me that folks are not coming away with a good understanding of clicker 
training principles.

NLS has a few books on clicker training.  BookShare has quite a few, I'm 
told.  There is an incredible amount of information on the internet, 
including the blog that Rox mentioned about guide dog training clicker 
conference that GDB just did.   I'd encourage people to read a few books to 
begin to really understand what clicker is and what it isn't before  coming 
to  inaccurate conclusions.

Julie
Courage to Dare: A Blind Woman's Quest to Train her Own Guide Dog is now 
available! Get the book here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00QXZSMOC
-----Original Message----- 
From: Debby Phillips via nagdu
Sent: Wednesday, July 01, 2015 11:02 PM
To: NAGDU Mailing List,the National Association of Guide Dog Users ; 
nagdu at nfbnet.org
Cc: Debby Phillips
Subject: Re: [nagdu] What's up with all the scavenging anyhow?

I know that Seeing Eye does some clicker training, but students
are not required to take part in it once they get through
training.  Everybody goes to the first meeting, I think, and then
decides for themselves.  It did and does help in targeting
specific things, like a specific chair in the dining room, a
particular pole, like a pole for pushing the button at a light,
or a bus stop pole, or a particular door.  I certainly would have
no problem using it for very specific things, but never on a
day-to-day basis.  I can see how tempting it would be to use it
all the time for everything.  But I think that's a very bad idea
and I'm glad that Seeing EYE does not do that.    Debby and Nova

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