When Pigs Fly_ Training Success With Impossible Dogs - Jane Killion [13]
Karen Pryor and veterinary neurophysiologist Barbara Schoening have been doing some research into the neuropsychology of clicker training in an attempt to discover exactly why clickers do work so well. Their hypothesis is that the click is processed in a different part of the brain than spoken words are. The click, they believe, goes directly to the instinctive, reflexive, part of the brain (the amygdala, which is part of the limbic system) instead of having to go to the “thinking” part of the brain (the cortex). According to Pryor in an article entitled The Neurophysiology of Clicker Training:
Research in neurophysiology has identified the kinds of stimuli—bright lights, sudden sharp sounds—that reach the amygdala first, before reaching the cortex or thinking part of the brain. The click is that kind of stimulus. Other research, on conditioned fear responses in humans, shows that these also are established via the amygdala, and are characterized by a pattern of very rapid learning, often on a single trial, long-term retention, and a big surge of concomitant emotions…. Barbara and I hypothesize that the clicker is a conditioned ‘joy’ stimulus that is acquired and recognized through those same primitive pathways, which would help explain why it is so very different from, say, a human word, in its effect.
Once a dog is properly conditioned on the clicker, he will react to the clicker reflexively. He literally cannot help but respond. I don’t know anyone who has conditioned a verbal marker (such as “yes” or “good”) to such a high degree. The clicker is definitely a power tool!
Piggy Pointer
You can get clickers on cords that you can wear around your neck, or a clicker that is attached to a springy cord that you can wear as a bracelet. You won’t have to wear it forever, but it helps if you always have a clicker on you when you are trying to capture a new behavior. I have clickers stashed in every room of my house—windowsills are great places to keep clickers.
Getting Loaded
How to Power Up the Clicker
In this exercise we are going to “load” the clicker, so that the dog knows what it means. Do this exercise at home at first. You want the environment to be a relatively boring for the dog so that the exercise is very interesting by comparison. Start with about 20 very small pieces of really yummy treats. The treats should be relatively small and soft so that the dog can eat them quickly. We are going to be doing some rapid repetitions of this exercise and we don’t want to have to wait for the dog to chew up a hard biscuit in between each rep. Hot dogs, cheese, ham, baked liver, and cut up chicken or steak are all popular training treats. Dried salmon is great for finicky dogs. Use something your dog goes crazy for—no dry kibble or other boring dog food. If you have a dog that does not relish food treats he is probably overfed. Try fasting him for a day (it’s good for him if he is otherwise healthy) and see if he is more interested in the treats after that. If your dog absolutely will not work for food, try toys or verbal praise or a head scratch.
Treats should be large enough to serve as a reward, but you don’t want the dog to get full during a training session. Even the largest dog does not need a treat cut larger than a nickel.
Place a bunch of treats in one hand and the clicker in the other. Click. Shove a treat in your dog’s mouth really quickly, within one half second of the click. You want to time the click and the treat very closely together when you are starting out so the dog makes an association between the two things. Do that about 20 times. Your pattern should be: click/treat, wait a beat; click/treat, wait a beat; click/treat, wait a beat; and so forth. We are conditioning the dog to have an almost involuntary response to the