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Month: July 2020

Ashley is standing at a curb on the sidewalk of a tree-lined street. She is smiling at the camera and walking with a yellow lab in Leader Dog harness.

By Guide Dog Mobility Instructor Ashley Nunnelly

In this post, Ashley explains the why and how of clicker training, which is the positive reinforcement method that our guide dog mobility instructors use to work with Leader Dogs in training. If you’re not familiar with a clicker (or marker), it’s a small tool that makes a consistent clicking noise when pressed.

To put it simply, when we use the clicker while training a dog, we’re telling the dog, “THAT’S RIGHT!”

If you read my last blog post (and if you haven’t, you should!), what I attempted to explain was B.F. Skinner’s theory of operant conditioning. Remember—a behavior that has a positive outcome for the learner is likely to be repeated.

Operant conditioning is a method of learning that occurs through rewards and punishments for behavior. Through operant conditioning, an individual makes an association between a particular behavior and a consequence (Skinner, 1938).

Let’s focus on part of that quote: “particular behavior.” This is important, and this is where the marker comes in.

I’m going to give you a hard truth right now—are you ready for it?

Humans are very slow.

Ashley sits on a chair in a grassy yard. She is holding a chicken in one arm and a book in the other hand titled "How to Speak Chicken." Another chicken is perched on her shoulder.SO SLOW. Let’s use an example to explain the problem. Say you’re training a dog to sit. To help the dog learn with positive reinforcement, you’ve got a supply of treats to give to the dog when they successfully perform the desired behavior. By the time you’ve taken a treat out of your treat pouch and gotten it into your dog’s mouth after a successful sit, they’ve done six other things. They sit, then they look up at you, then they think about the bird that they saw a few bushes back, then maybe they twitched their ears twice, and suddenly—WOW! A treat came to my mouth! How on earth do they know which of those things the treat was for? That’s a lot of guessing. If I were a dog, I would just pick whichever my natural favorite behavior was. Probably thinking about the bird. I like birds. Chickens especially, they’re so cuuuute and they make funny noises and—WHOA, it just happened to me there. It’s pretty easy to lose your learner’s attention.

So, how do we deal with this? How do we increase the precision of rewarding the dog for the behavior we want? We use the clicker to counteract our human slowness and mark the right behavior. We can use the clicker much faster than we can get the treat to the dog’s mouth. This way, we can mark the sit rather than accidentally marking a different behavior. That tells the dog, “THAT’S RIGHT! Here’s a reinforcer of a treat for performing a sit. Now, do it again!”

This clears up so much confusion for your learner. It takes away the guesswork and the vague parameters of expectation. Also, a click is a very distinctive sound. If every time the dog hears the click, it’s followed with something positive (like a treat), then the sound of the click actually releases a surge of dopamine into their brain—it releases the “happy anticipation.” I GOT IT RIGHT!

Embarrassing story: when I was in 9th grade I had a math tutor that my parents hired to help me with algebra (creative theatre person here. Math was not my forte). He was very handsome. My 14-year-old self had a HUGE crush on this grown man. Every time I got a problem right, he would say, “Perfect.” I wish my typing could convey how he said it, because as I’m typing this my 29-year-old self has butterflies in my stomach and I’m blushing. THAT is positive reinforcement—and that is the happy anticipation that dogs feel before the treat comes. And yes, I ultimately DID get an A in algebra.

When you’re clicker training, timing and observation are essential skills. You have to click the exact millisecond of the behavior that you want.

Gryf, a Pyrnenean Shepherd, sits in the front of a kayak looking toward the camera.
Gryf

One time I was playing around with teaching my Pyrenean Shepherd, Gryf, a hearing dog “alert” behavior. It was just for fun and because after going through the Karen Pryor Academy Professionals course (if you haven’t heard of it, Karen Pryor Academy offers certifications in a variety of positive dog training courses) together, Gryf and I have a really solid clicker training language. He helps teach me how to teach other dogs.

My goal behavior was that at the sound of a doorbell, he would repeatedly nudge my leg at my knee with his nose no matter what position I was in until I stood up. So, I was working on teaching him nudge-nudge-nudge-nudge-nudge with a lot of persistence for a long period of time. Because I’m picky, I also decided that I wanted him to nudge me hard enough to make my leg move.

WELL. My first several clicks were too slow, and because Gryf is such a fast learner, I accidentally taught him to very gently nibble my pants seam with only his front teeth. He was CONVINCED that was what I was asking for. Technically, in terms of what I’d just trained, he wasn’t wrong. I had accidentally told him that! And it was very hard to get him out of that mode once I got him into it. If I had been faster and clicked for only his nose touching, or even just when the muscles of his neck moved to jut his chin closer to my knee, then I wouldn’t have clicked myself into that predicament.

So, what does one actually do with a clicker?

The answer is: anything you want! Truly, the possibilities are endless. Let’s talk about two big components of clicker training: capturing a behavior and shaping a behavior.

Capturing: Pick a behavior that your learner does naturally. Let’s say it’s lying down. There are times that your dog does it all on their own. To capture this behavior, you carry a clicker and some yummy treats with you. You casually observe your dog. Your dog yawns, stretches and lies down. CLICK—treat. The dog thinks, “HUH?!” The dog will probably want to guess what on earth made that happen and how can it happen again. A savvy dog that already really knows the clicker game will memorize whatever they were doing at the time of that click and do it again, but most learners will be surprised. Luckily for them, lying down is a behavior that is highly likely to occur again, which means you can click and reinforce with a treat again very soon for “lie down.” After a few repetitions even your least savvy dog will figure out that lie down= click+treat, so they better lie down again really quickly!

Shaping: This is a little more complex. In 1999, Paul Chance defined shaping as “the use of successive approximations to achieve a target behavioral goal.”

WHEW, science talk. In plain English, shaping means slowly raising your criteria of what gets a click so that at each step you get a little closer to your goal. I’ll give you an example “shaping plan” that some incredible Leader Dog instructor apprentices named Emily and Stephanie created.

Our problem: there was a golden retriever in our canine center who, due to a veterinary procedure, had to wear the “cone of shame.” He was totally convinced that he could not lie his head down while wearing the cone and kept his head completely upright while staring at us with indignation in his eyes. We wanted to teach him to relax while wearing the cone. So, we shaped it!

Shaping plan

The plan was to slowly get the golden retriever to accept resting his head on something while wearing the cone, ultimately resting his head all the way on the floor. We started at an easy point for him—just moving his chin in the direction of an instructor’s outstretched hand.

Goal behavior: Golden retriever lies on his mat with his chin on the ground while wearing his cone.

Step 1: Click for putting his chin to someone’s hand.

Step 2: ​Click for putting the full weight of his chin in the hand.

Step 3: Click for him aiming his chain at a hand when the hand is presented at changing angles, including lowering the hand toward the ground.

Step 4: Click for him aiming his chin for a hand and putting the weight of his chin in the hand.

Step 5: Click for him lying down and resting his chin in the hand for a sustained period of time.

Here, we added the verbal clue “chin” to prompt him to perform the desired behavior.

At this point, he was reliably putting his chin in an instructor’s hand. Now we wanted him to perform the same behavior while touching his chin to the bottom of his cone so that he got used to the feeling of his chin on the cone. To do this, we started offering our hands outside of the cone so that it was the cone touching our hand instead of his chin directly. In the beginning, we encouraged the behavior by smearing a little peanut butter in the bottom inside of his cone.

Step 6: Click for the dog touching his head to the instructor’s hand while the hand is flat on the mat.

Step 7: Click for him lowering his head to mat on the verbal cue and no hands are used.

Step 8: Click for resting his head on the mat for a sustained period of time.

This plan slowly increased the criteria to earn a click. Every step brought the golden retriever closer to lying his chin on the ground with his cone on. We also “lured” him a little bit with the use of peanut butter so that we could create a better opportunity to click for his chin touching the bottom of the cone. We always want to do whatever we can to set the stage for the dog to choose the behavior we’re looking for.

So you see, dear reader, your possibilities are endless. And that is exciting. The wonderful thing about clicker training is that we give the dogs a choice of what they will do next. There is no punishment or fear involved. The dog has autonomy and our clicks and reinforcing treats/petting/praise just guide them. This is so important in the work of a guide dog. They are faced with choices every time they choose to start walking when I or a client gives the command “forward.” The wonderful thing about guide dog work is that I CAN’T force a dog to do it. The dog HAS to choose. The dog has to take those steps and make those choices and find that curb. Every dog that is a guide dog chose to be a guide dog. And my clicks guided those choices for how they do their work.

Ashley crouches near the ground, which is covered with leaves. She is rubbing the belly of a gray and white wolf hybrid.Here is a fantastic quote from the Mother of Clicker Training, Karen Pryor, who brought operant conditioning to the pet dog industry:

“Then, that memorably powerful look into my eyes told me something more: compared to dogs, wolves are grown-ups. He was not asking for help, head down, forehead wrinkled, as a dog might: ‘Is this right? What do you want?’ Instead, head high, gaze level, he was assessing me, like a poker player: ‘Are you in or out?’ Judging that I was in, he made his move; and we both won.” (p.6)
― Karen Pryor, Reaching the Animal Mind: Clicker Training and What It Teaches Us About All Animals

If you are interested in learning more about clicker training straight from the source, I suggest that you check out Karen Pryor’s books Reaching the Animal Mind and Don’t Shoot the Dog. Those two books are where almost all of my understanding and information about clicker training has come from. Hopefully this post was a good start for those of you who are new or learning clicker trainers!

Read Ashley’s previous post, “Dogs Don’t Speak English.”

A yellow lab in leather Leader Dog harness sits on a sidewalk looking up at the camera. Its mouth is open as if smiling. The legs of the person standing behind and holding the dog's leash are visible.

By Client Joanne Lax

We have plenty of laws in the United States protecting the rights of people with disabilities. The grand-daddy of them all is the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, which since 1990 guarantees disabled individuals employment opportunities and access to everyday activities like shopping, going to the movies, eating at a restaurant, attending a concert or sporting event, among many others. This watershed legislation facilitated great strides forward for people with disabilities and is to be commended. What hasn’t made the same great strides forward, however, is the attitudes and behavior of John and Jane Q Public toward people with disabilities.

I can speak with considerable authority on this subject. I lost vision when I was in my late twenties. With the help of a very supportive husband and specialized rehabilitation counselors, I made it through the emotional trauma and learned how to adapt. It turns out that my approach to adapting mirrored the philosophy of the main character in the book A Gentleman in Moscow, which I read some 35 years later: “You must master your circumstances or your circumstances will master you.”

To be sure, some things dramatically changed for me. I need to receive information about the world using four senses rather than five, so some things that are obvious to sighted people aren’t obvious to me. And I need assistance navigating the environment—where’s the door I want, or the unoccupied chair, or the uneven pavement that intends to jump up and trip me, or the bicycle that is parked haphazardly across the sidewalk trying to block my path? Much of that navigation assistance comes from my guide dog—an amazing animal. Much of that assistance also comes from sighted humans, especially my husband.

But aside from these logistical challenges, I’m the same person now as I was when I could see. I have the same likes, dislikes, personality, aptitudes and faults. My experience has allowed me to witness firsthand the difference between how someone is treated when he or she is perceived as normal versus when he or she is perceived as disabled. The chasm is immense, and the landscape on the disability side isn’t always pretty.

Of course, I have an inner circle of friends, colleagues and relatives who totally get it and relate to me in exactly the way I hope everyone would. I am incredibly grateful for each and every one of them. Sadly, though, that’s not the case across the board. I will consider this blog post to be an immense success if I can heighten the awareness of even one as yet unenlightened reader about how to behave respectfully towards people with disabilities.

I’ll categorize the behaviors that I’d like to change into five groups. First there’s what I call the Invisibility Syndrome. Then there’s the Pedestal Effect. Closely followed by the Canine Tunnel Vision Phenomenon, the When it Benefits Me Approach, and finally the Unintended Consequences Principle. Here’s what I mean.

The Invisibility Syndrome occurs when someone disregards a disabled person entirely, as though they were invisible. Consider this example. My husband and I were in the lingerie department of a large store. We approached the sales counter because I wanted assistance in making my selection. The salesperson looked directly at my husband and asked him “What does she want?” Last I knew, my husband doesn’t wear ladies’ lingerie and had no idea what I wanted. I was both humiliated and embarrassed—as was he. Ditto when a waitress looked at him and asked “Does she want lemon with her iced tea?” All visually impaired people are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves, so please speak directly to us. The Invisibility Syndrome also manifests itself when officemates walked past without any greeting, as though basic civility didn’t apply for visually impaired people. Or when officemates didn’t stop at my office to extend an invitation when gathering an impromptu group to go to lunch or to have a happy hour cocktail. Visually impaired people want to be recognized and included just like sighted people do. So please extend visually impaired people the same courtesy and comradery as anyone else.

The Pedestal Effect falls on the opposite end of the spectrum. Sighted people will gush over how remarkable, admirable and inspiring it is that a visually impaired person can do everyday things—attend a concert, walk the track at the gym, cook a meal, even walk and chew gum at the same time. I know that these people all mean well. But I’m not amazing, awesome, inspirational, marvelous or whatever word you choose. I’m just a mere mortal doing normal things the best way I can. This kind of exaltation makes me uncomfortable. No pedestals are needed. Please accept a visually impaired person as just a normal, everyday human doing normal, everyday things, albeit with adaptations.

The Canine Tunnel Vision Phenomenon elevates my guide dog over me. I have had five terrific guide dogs, including my present beautiful 3-year-old black lab. I am more than happy to answer questions about the dog and to be a goodwill ambassador for Leader Dogs for the Blind. I owe her and the organization a tremendous debt of gratitude and am happy to pay it off any way I can. But that’s not all I want to talk about. The Canine Tunnel Vision Phenomenon assumes that my entire repertoire of conversation focuses on dogs—my dog, your dog, your cousin’s dog, the dog you saw on TV—on and on. Often people don’t know my name, but they remember my dog’s name. I’d love to engage you in much broader conversation. Please be willing to talk to a visually impaired person about anything and everything that you’d talk about with one of your sighted friends. We are multi-faceted people just like you.

The When it Benefits Me Approach is more insidious. Some businesses only pay lip service to the concept of non-discrimination until they decide that treating disabled people fairly has a payoff for them. Consider this example. A prominent entertainment venue in my geographic area does not have accessible seating at every ticket price point. It declined to give me a ticket for existing accessible seating in a different location for the price point I wanted. Instead it insisted that I could sit on an aisle in the balcony and let my guide dog sit on the steps alongside the rows of seats. Not a good idea, since it is obvious that this would create a trip hazard for patrons using the steps, particularly if someone needed to leave their seat after the performance started and the lights were dimmed. Not to mention that the dog would be uncomfortable straddling steps. At our fourth performance of the season, an usher recognized the unsafe situation, got a manager involved, and resolved the situation to everyone’s satisfaction by relocating my husband, me and my dog to seats on the main floor where my guide dog could comfortably and safely lie down. It took a real-time epiphany for the venue to do the right thing. By the way, the Americans with Disabilities Act requires entertainment venues to locate accessible seating in all sections, or to otherwise make them available at all price points. Wouldn’t it have been better for the venue to have assigned me appropriate seating from the get go—for its own risk management purposes and for customer relations, let alone legal compliance?

Finally, there’s the Unintended Consequences Principle. Well-meaning, even beneficial policies don’t always work out that way. The regional transit authority in my geographic area operates a door-to-door bus for seniors and people with disabilities. Yet it refused to let me enroll for that service (even though I am a senior) because of my guide dog. It insisted that I use its ADA bus—the transportation program specifically designed under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The problem? The enrollment process for the ADA bus was so long that I was unable to use the bus when I needed it. Obviously, a good program went awry here and turned into a discriminatory barrier instead of a benefit. The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits the concept of “separate but equal,” which is what the transit authority essentially imposed. A dose of common sense and flexibility would have gone a long way toward providing meaningful service to a person with a disability.

In conclusion, we all should recognize that everyone is just one bad car accident or one bit of bad medical luck away from being a person with a disability. If that misfortune happened to you, you’d want people to interact with you exactly as they always have—as a whole person working hard to overcome a challenge. You wouldn’t want to be defined as just an impairment. Please, then, behave that way towards the people with disabilities that you may encounter in your daily life. There’s a reason why the Golden Rule is golden!

Meet client Joanne Lax and find out more about her background and connection to Leader Dog.

Joanne sits in front of a gray photo background. She is wearing a black and white flowery shirt and smiling. Next to her is a seated black lab in harness.

Greetings, fellow Leader Dog users and supporters. Let me introduce myself, since I am a new contributor to Leader Dog publications.

My name is Joanne Lax. I lost my vision around 1980, when I was 27 years old. I had graduated law school a few years earlier and was working in a large corporate law firm. By 1982, I decided that I wanted a Leader Dog, and that cane travel wasn’t for me. That was one of the best decisions that I ever made in terms of dealing with my disability.

Since then, I have worked with five amazing Leader Dogs—two golden retrievers, one yellow lab and two black labs. Four of them are honored with an engraved brick on the Leader Dog campus and on the electronic display in the state-of-the-art canine development center [at Leader Dog]. They are affectionately known as “the best dogs ever.” I didn’t have my fifth dog at the time of those fundraising campaigns, so her honors will need to wait for the next campaign. Each dog has had its own personality, strengths and even weaknesses. All of them made my life as a practicing attorney, wife, mother and community volunteer that much easier.

I hope that my publications for Leader Dogs will do several things. High on the list is heightening public awareness for the needs and rights of the visually impaired community. With awareness often comes activism, which I hope to promote. Also on the list of what I hope my publications will achieve is an opportunity for Leader Dog users to support each other with dialogue about common experiences as a dog user—good or bad. We can be each other’s strongest allies. Finally, I hope to be able to provide outside resources for Leader Dog users and supporters with items that are beyond the scope of Leader Dog publications.

I look forward to getting to know all of you through upcoming posts.