Mary Hunter writes a wonderful blog about her experience clicker training a variety of animals (mostly horses and now, two new pet rats). The principals of clicker training a horse or a rat or a whale or a fish are exactly the same as they are for clicker training a dog.
Exactly the same.
So are you smarter than a 5th grader? Is your dog smarter than a rat? Your dog certainly has a larger and more complex brain than a rat (with all due respect to rats, which are fine creatures with a lot of intelligence).
In this post on her blog, she gives some important reminders of how to set up your training sessions so your totally-novice student (the animal) can be most successful and can focus on the training session at hand.
1. Remove Distractions
2. Limit the environment
3. Use a high value treat
4. Plan for optimal food delivery
5. Keep sessions short
She has good stuff to say about each of these points. Check it out.
Happy training!
Thanks for linking to my post, I'm glad you enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI won't tell the rats that you said dogs have more intelligence. :)
Interestingly, our dog's new FAVORITE reinforcer is getting to go into my room and stare at the rats. Haven't exactly figured out how to use this within training sessions. Although, after a good session, I'll often let her go in there and watch them for awhile.
cheers,
Mary