Category: Animal Training

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Animal Emotions Animal Training

How aversives and distractors can muck up your animal training

Is this familiar?

Your cat comes when called in the kitchen, but not in the garden.

Does the kitty ignore your recall in distracting environments?

Or your horse loads beautifully into the old trailer, but refuses to set hoof in the brand new one.

Or your dog sits on cue anywhere but in the vet’s office.

This problem could be about either (or both) of two issues:

  • You haven’t successfully communicated to the animal what you want him to do
  • The animal isn’t motivated to do what you’re asking

In order to successfully get behaviour in all contexts, you need to address both Communication and Motivation.

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Animal Emotions Animal Training

Poisoning – or counter conditioning?

Updated August 2023

Yes or no, true or false?

“If you combine negative reinforcement with positive reinforcement, you poison the learning process.”

Do you agree?

Do you poison the cue? The environment? Yourself? – if you after a negatively reinforced response add a positive reinforcer (AKA combined reinforcement)?

Some of the readers of this blog may say “yes”.

Some may say “no”.

Some may say “huh?”

After all, that question doesn’t make sense if you’re unfamiliar with those terms. Stay tuned, I’ll explain them in a minute.

I think the right answer is “it depends”.

Is combined reinforcement poisonous?

Before we start untangling the potential pitfalls of combined reinforcement – why is this an important question?

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Animal Training

Do we need to redefine “training” – or “behaviour”? Or both?

Originally published in 2018; revised May 2023.

One of my online courses is called Getting Behaviour – The Foundations of Animal Training.

My students are really excited about it.

I’m very proud of it, and I had this idea to share part of the course for free, here on the blog. The course is about 13 hours long and contains 109 short videos, so I wanted to pick one of those videos and share with you. The best one.

That was difficult. Which video to choose?

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Categories
Animal Training Ethics

Does your animal have control?

Many animal trainers, veterinarians and pet owners highlight the importance of controlling animals. Controlling them, as in restricting the animals’ movement, their choices and their opportunities to control their environment through their behaviour.

Sometimes you have to, for safety reasons.

Obviously.

But often you don’t – and more often than you might think. Actually, the trend in modern animal training is to deliberately and strategically shift control from the handler to the animal, while still staying safe.

Who’s controlling the cut? You – or the dog?
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Categories
Animal Training Weathering scepticism

When clickers work

Using a clicker when training – useful or not?

Revised December 2020 (see bottom of post!)

Training using a clicker is very popular, and is gaining ground amongst animal trainers, but here’s what may come as a surprise to you:

When scientists compare the effectiveness of using a clicker when training to training using only treats as rewards (or reinforcers, to be more precise) outside the laboratory, the results are inconclusive.

One study found the clicker led to faster learning, one that it led to slower learning, and four studies found no difference between the two treatments.

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Animal Training Ethics Problem Solving Weathering scepticism

20 problems with punishment in animal training

20-effects

Revised February 2023 – original written in 2016 .

Recently there was a video post in my Facebook feed that caught my attention.

Typically, on Facebook, I’m a bit of a lurker. I’m not very active, and when I do watch videos I often don’t share, like or comment – even when perhaps I should.

This time, I watched, feeling my jaw gradually dropping in disbelief, and then I actually left a comment.

I wrote:

“I’m speechless”.

And that was it.

I know, kinda lame.

But I didn’t have time for an essay, and then I was flooded by the rest of the FB flow, so the film slipped to the back of my mind – where it’s been festering.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that I was speechless. But in the time that’s gone by, I’ve realized that I should do the opposite.

I should speak up.

Continue reading “20 problems with punishment in animal training”