You’ve just started a training session with your animal learner. Your animal does several great reps of the behavior you’re teaching. Click and treat! Then, your animal does something you hadn’t anticipated. The behavior isn’t quite the same as your goal behavior… However, it’s pretty darn close to the behavior you want… You freeze! Should […]
Tag Archives | timing
Training fundamentals: What is good timing?
Clicker training seems easy. You just click when the desired behavior occurs. However, it’s important that you click at precisely the right time. Experienced animal trainers understand the importance of good timing. If your clicks are often too early (or too late), you may accidentally reinforce the wrong behavior. If your timing is inconsistent, you […]
Making alternative plans
When you are training an animal, you are working with another living creature. What happens during training is an interaction between this particular animal and your training plan. In some cases, the animal does something that you didn’t anticipate. I’ve been thinking this week about what happens when things don’t go as planned. What happens […]
Clicker training Q&A: Where to click?
I recently had someone ask a great question about one of my YouTube videos of my rat Georgie. In the video, Georgie gets clicked for going through a piece of PVC pipe. The person asked: I don’t mean this as a criticism, but as an honest question– I’m looking at the timing of your click, […]
The continuous nature of targeting
I worked some with Beau over the weekend. Beau is a big black and white horse who was very badly abused at some point. He has made a ton of progress in the past year and is now a pretty friendly guy. Beau enjoys interacting with people and will approach you in the pasture, follow […]
The Shape of Bow Wow — DVD review
We watched a fun DVD yesterday in the undergrad class that I am helping with as a teaching assistant. The DVD was one by dog trainer Virginia Broitman called The Shape of Bow Wow. This DVD is an intro to shaping, or training behaviors in small steps. Shaping is a very important skill for animal […]