Last week I traveled to Lake Tahoe to give a half-day presentation on Control Unleashed at the Entlefest.  I realize this requires some translation.  The Entlefest is the annual national breed club meeting for the National Entelbucher Mountain Dog Association.  An Entlebucher (Entlebuch Sennenhund) is one of the four Swiss Mountain dog breeds.  Many are familiar with the two bigger members of this group, the Bernese Mountain Dog and the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog.  The smaller members, the Entlebucher and the Appenzeller, are much less common and less well known.  The Entlebucher is rather low slung and powerful, and was specially bred to gently but firmly herd prized Swiss dairy cattle without knocking them off the numerous cliffs.  Entles in the US do not do much herding, but enjoy lives as pets, obedience dogs and sports companions (there are a few very fast flyball Entles).  The question most often answered by Entle owners is, “Is that a Beagle/Rottweiler mix?”

I was honored to be asked to present.  CU author and developer Leslie McDevitt personally recommended me to the NEMDA members who inquired many months ago.  Committee members Linda Planting and Leelee Stefanki were very patient with me as we worked out scheduling, programming, and accommodations.  I was even more excited when they asked me if I could add another activity for the afternoon of the same day:  Judging a European-style working temperament test for the dogs in attendance.  I will write about that separately.

Along with able assistant Jett Wyatt, her Aussie, Kiva, and my Border Collie, Mellie, we drove the 600 miles from Portland to Lake Tahoe the day before the presentation.  It was tiring and I’m very grateful to the nice policeman who decided not to ticket me for speeding near the Lava Beds National Monument.  We were hoping to arrive at the lake before dark so the dogs could have a good run, but we didn’t quite make it.  We stopped in Carson City to buy a good flashlight and the dogs got a short ramble on the beach before we collapsed.

The presentation started at 8:30, and I spent the first 20 minutes arranging the participants so that their dogs were in the most restful spots possible.  A very big part of CU is learning to set up your dog’s environment to reduce arousal and stress.  Instead of allowing participants to put crates in rows along the tent walls, I had them spread crates out to minimize strange-dog proximity stress.  Then we got started.

We had anticipated about a dozen working dogs, but in the end, nineteen dogs’ owners wanted to participate.  I decided to arrange things so that every owner got at least one participatory slot.  I selected six dogs to work all the way through (three sections), and then divided the rest into thirds and assigned each third to one of the three sections.  The owners’ questionnaire responses were invaluable in helping me to select which section would most suit each dog.

I talked about theory for about 15 minutes and then we launched into the first working section, which was about body language.  As each dog entered the “box” (the working space in CU), the audience called out their guesses about how each dog was feeling.  I was thrilled that so many members readily identified sniffing and lip licking as signs of stress.  We added some more signs for them to recognize and apply:  stretching, shaking off, yawning, and so on.  The last demonstration was possible because one of the applicants for a working spot had an elderly dog who’d gone blind.  We had her interact with a stable younger dog so that the audience could see what the younger dog did when the older one inevitable was unable to recognize early body language and continued into the younger one’s personal space bubble.  The older dog handled herself fine and I hope the lesson was clear:  Dogs are communicating by tiny body language signals all the time!  A lot is happening before there is a growl or snap.

We then moved onto demonstrating the Give Me A Break game.  This game is hard to visualize from reading the book.  We had the usual range of dogs who were Velcroed to their owners to dogs who needed really long breaks.  The audience was getting good at telling sniffing for information apart from stress (displacement) sniffing.  All the dogs shortened their “breaks” on their own and the owners started to feel the value of allowing the dogs to choose attention rather than trying to compel it.

Last we examined the Look At That game.  Probably the best known of the CU games, it’s a very useful one.  We supplied distractions to suit each dog as best we could.  I ran around one dog who sometimes grabs running children.  (She was great, very hard to distract!)  We brought in Mellie to tug, walk, or run near some of the other dogs.  We banged a crate door and dragged a chair for one dog who startles at sudden noises.  Finally, we worked with a formidable titled athlete who is obsessed with tennis balls.  We showed how we could get him to “LAT Tennis Ball” as a way to get him to leave it alone.  After five minutes, he was looking at the ball as Jett and I rolled it back and forth between us just a few feet away.  His owner was impressed and could see how to expand this result to a more normal situation.

With this dog I also detoured for a few minutes to show how to teach a good Out with a tug.  He is a mature, powerful dog who has spent 6 years being very hard to get toys from.  In five repetitions I had him releasing his tug extremely readily and was starting to put a cue on it.  Once I recovered my breath (we were at 6200 feet!), I could see that quite a few audience members were busy taking notes.

We wound up when the lunch crew was busy setting up tables.  Our tent had become the lunch tent!  People had lots of questions and I finally had to defer so we could give our hardworking dogs a break before the afternoon activities started up.  We were thrilled to notice one of the attendees playing Look At That dog in the parking lot.  I’m certain he’s on the way to agility success with his beautiful, athletic young Entle boy.

Today, October 15 2009, is Blog Action Day.  Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world’s bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day on their own blogs with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance.  By doing so on the same day, the blogging community effectively changes the conversation on the web and focuses audiences around the globe on that issue. If you’re interested in finding more information, visit http://blogactionday.org and register your blog now to be part of the largest social change event on the web.  Today, the topic is climate change.  I feel it is the critical issue of our time and I want to put in my two cents worth.

There are three steps to changing the world:  awareness, education and choices. Everything begins with awareness.  Awareness is what brought you to read this blog.  Awareness is what has most likely made you concerned enough to want to do something.  Awareness is what prompts you to make the next step.

Education is the next step.  So there is where I would like to give you some things to think about in regard to your pet’s carbon footprint.  Using up the world’s resources is about what goes in and what comes out.  Let’s look at what goes in, first.

Where does pet food come from?  The majority of pet food is made by companies that produce products for human consumption.  The pet food is a way for them to use materials that can’t go into human food.   These are by-products, and they are listed on the pet food label as “by-products”.   This can be good, since it is good to use everything possible rather than going into a landfill.  But it can be not-so-good if we don’t know what is in the food.  I teach a nutrition section in a veterinary assisting program, and one question I ask my students is “What are meat by-products?”   The correct answer is “I don’t know.”

The other way manufacturers keep the cost of pet food low is to find the cheapest ingredients they can.  This may involve buying ingredients from China.  Not only did this result in a massive pet food recall in 2007, but think of all the miles those ingredients need to travel.  Even when the company imports high quality ingredients like lamb from New Zealand or sea meal from Scotland, these items still have to travel thousands of miles, using a lot of fossil fuels.  Your pet’s carbon footprint can increase by the bag of food you buy.  So what if you decide to make your pet’s food with local ingredients?  It isn’t as hard as it may sound.  Many people cook for themselves.  Cooking for your pet can be just as easy.  Maybe easier, since our pets aren’t as picky as some of us are.  Kidneys?  Sure.  Tripe?  Yum!  Two day old baked potato?  Yes, thank you.  People food is not a bad thing.  Most people eat it.  There are some things to keep in mind, though, if you want to feed your pet a homemade diet.  Cats are obligate carnivores.  They require animal protein in their diet.  Don’t try to make them vegan.  A veterinary nutritionist once told me that the best food for a cat was a mouse, if they ate it all.  It has the muscle meat protein, it has greens all nicely predigested and it has the necessary calcium and phosphorus in the correct ratio.  Keep that in mind when formulating a homemade diet for your cat.  Even though dogs in the wild are scavengers, they also need the correct calcium phosphorus ratio.  Don’t feed them just the muscle meat.  Not only is that not a carbon-friendly food (unless you live on a beef ranch), but also it is imbalanced.  Dogs need vegetables and fiber for vitamins and healthy digestion.

What else do our pets consume?  Very little, compared to a human.  Food bowls, toys, collars, harnesses and leashes, perhaps.  Even these few things can have an impact.   Consider where they originate.  Items made in the US travel less than items made outside the country.  It can be hard to find something that is not made in China, but it is possible.  There are many artisans who make ceramic food bowls and leather leashes.  Toys can be very simple and still fun.  Consider getting stuffed toys from the thrift store.  Just make sure the little swallow-able bits are removed.  Got any old clothes that aren’t good enough for the thrift store?  Braid, them, knot them and make a tug.  You can even make a food puzzle out of a cardboard box or two.

OK, now what happens on the other end of the pet?   We already know that picking up the waste is a good thing and keeps harmful bacteria and parasites out of our environment.  But where does it go after we scoop?  I direct you now to a website that considers all these alternatives.  The Snohomish County Public Works web site has a frequently asked questions section titled Pet Waste Disposal Methods, The good, the bad, and the yucky. This site discusses several alternatives.   So, which is best?   In a plastic bag?  In the trash?  In the toilet?   In a hole?  In the compost?

Which leads me to the third step in the process of changing the world: choices.  We are changing the world simply by being alive.  How we are changing the world depends upon the choices we make.  Choices result from not only how aware we are and how educated we are, but also from our priorities.   For example, if your veterinarian recommends a prescription diet for you pet, you have a choice between following that recommendation and feeding something more sustainable for the planet.  You also have a choice to feed something cheaper and more convenient.  Whatever you choose, it will reflect your understanding and priorities.

I am not here to tell you what choices to make.  Nor should you look at others and tell them what choices to make.  It may be that they are not to the awareness stage yet.  Trying to dictate to them what they should do will most likely backfire and close their minds.  Think of it as changing a dog’s behavior.  Force rarely works well.  You lead by example and reward small increment to the behavior you want.

So, start with yourself.  Become more aware of the issues.  Educate yourself about what you can do.  And make the best choices you can in your circumstance.  Even if the things you do seem small and insignificant, you will never know all the ripples you produce.  Let me close with a quote from one who did change the world.

“You may think your actions are meaningless and that they won’t help, but that is no excuse, you must still act.”  – Mahatma Gandhi

Companion Animal Solutions believes that breed bans are a bad idea for a number of reasons. Instead of discussing this broad topic in a general way, I decided to get a copy of Seattle’s proposed breed ban legislation. I found so many vague and problematic issues with Seattle’s proposed legislation that I’m breaking my article into three parts. This is the first of those three parts.

Recently I’ve noticed bumper stickers and posters popping up with sweetheart pictures of stocky dogs or small children or both, either in support of or in opposition to breed bans. In many dog communities, breed-specific legislation (BSL) has become a prominent topic of discussion and debate, resulting in a variety of websites and groups centered on promoting or preventing laws restricting ownership or breeding of “pit bulls” among other breeds. One article can neither fully explore the numerous perspectives on this delicate, emotionally loaded topic, nor discuss the rationale (or lack thereof) behind all of them. This series of blog entries will focus on the local situation: the practicality of proposed legislation that has recently been circulating in Seattle. After reading the proposed law from beginning to end, I’m convinced that the writers missed out on a few very important facts about dogs, beginning with their designation of which dogs this law would affect.

One of the biggest debate points regarding breed bans has been the ability to identify the banned breeds to begin with. The proposed Seattle law would affect the following breeds: “Akita, American Pit Bull Terrier, American Staffordshire Terrier, Bull Terrier, Cane Corso, Dogo Argentino, Dogue de Bordeaux, Kuvasz, Pit Bull Terrier, Presa Canario, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, or Tosa Inu, or breed of any dog, or any mix of dog breeds which contains as an element of its breeding any of the abovelisted breeds, as to be identifiable of or partially of such breed(s), and any breed designated by the Director pursuant to this chapter as a “fighting breed”.

“Any mix of dog breeds with an element of any of those breeds?” How large a percentage is considered an element? Considering that dog trainers, breeders, veterinarians, and shelter workers with years of experience working with a variety of breeds are often at a loss when it comes to identifying the combination of breeds that make up many mixed-breed dogs, I’m interested to know how the city intends to enforce this. For many dogs, visual inspection will not allow reliable, accurate identification. Many Boxer or American Bulldog mixes (heck, even purebreds are frequently misidentified) might be labeled “pitbull mixes” because of their stocky build and short fur. For example, the “Find a Pit Bull Quiz” is quite enlightening for many people.

An alternative might be DNA testing, but even here we run into a reliability problem. I’ve met or heard of a number of Heinz 57 mutts whose DNA results came back “unknown,” talked to owners of AKC purebreds whose results listed three or four breeds, with the dog’s registered breed third or fourth on the list. The “Wisdom Panel MX Mixed Breed Analysis,” one of the more expensive DNA tests available, retails at about $130 before you pay the vet to do the blood draw required. My Google search to find product reviews for different DNA tests) suggests vets consider the Wisdom Panel more reliable than the cheaper cheek swab kits. According to the company website, the test has “an average accuracy of 90% in first generation cross-bred dogs.” It says nothing of second or third generation cross-bred dogs (what if the dog in question comes from two mutts, as well?), and even among the dogs they used to test, 90% accuracy isn’t a number I’d be willing to bet a dog’s life on. However, should the City of Seattle find DNA tests to be an acceptable method of determining if an element of one of the breeds in question exists, who will foot the bill for the test? Simply determining which dogs the restrictions should apply to is a huge challenge.

I’ll look at further problems with the legislation in Part Two of this blog.

I recently went online at Twitter. I know, I know, I’m not much for “social networking” sites, but I like Twitter. I’m finding it to be more business and technology related than Facebook. I’m able to get small, smart chunks of information without all the distracting “features” of other social networking sites. I’ve been posting links to articles and information about dog training and animal behavior. We’ll have a live feed from Twitter on our blog soon, but in the meantime, if you’d like to see the animal behavior and dog training information I’ve been posting, you can follow me (or my Tweets if you will) at: http://twitter.com/chibbard.

So back to fishing the Keys: aquatic applied animal behavior in action!  In the Keys for a fishing-immersion, 50th birthday trip, I described the offshore trip in my last blog.  But what I was really looking forward to was the flats-fishing: two mornings, out before sunrise (ouch!), and in position on a 2-3 foot deep sand and grass flat, in a boat designed to float in less than 1 foot of water, watching for the characteristic changes in the surface of the water that revealed the movement and feeding of bonefish, tarpon, and sharks under the surface.  It’s a more subtle kind of fishing than offshore running-and-gunning for open-ocean species, and when a bonefish finally slurps that shrimp or lure and accelerates away to peel 300 feet of line off your reel in a matter of seconds, there is nothing like it.  I had successfully fly-fished for bonefish in lagoons on the north side of the island of Cozumel in Mexico (that’s another story altogether), but for the much spookier, more experienced fish here in the Keys, we were fishing with live crabs and shrimp.

So the approach is more like the wildlife photography that I had been doing since I was a teen-ager, and in which my son was quite active now: a stalk, a stake-out, a quiet move to a (hopefully) better location.  Keen eyes (some keener than others) watching for the evidence of an animal’s passage, attempts to predict the movement of feeding animals: again, applied animal behavior in action.  All set in an absolutely gorgeous tropical setting, with exotic birds (frigates, ibis, endangered herons and pigeons) to watch at the slow times.

How’d we do?  Not bad: our guide was Captain Ann Holahan out of Islamorada (boneranger.com), and she first moved us to a channel on the edge of a flat to try for tarpon, the huge, leaping species that has excited so many anglers in the past like Zane Grey and George H.W. Bush, who had caught a 130 pound tarpon a few hundred yards from our location a few months ago.  We dropped a couple of crabs over the side, and watched the sun rise… in what seems now like a very short time, my line was tight.  But no jumping, just repeated high speed runs, each run peeling off a hundred feet or more of line in that, oh, so satisfying whine of the reel that signifies a BIG fish.  Without the characteristic jumps, it didn’t seem like a tarpon: perhaps just a big lunker nurse shark, a relatively unexciting and very common species.  But the speed was too much.  Thirty-five minutes of fight later, and the brilliant silver flash of a very large permit neared the surface: 40 pounds of a beautiful fish, not a record but a very large fish, probably a tournament winner if we had been in a tournament.  A Captain Ann client had boated a 60+ pounder a few months earlier: she’ll need to be careful or she’ll have to switch her reputation from bonefish to big permit.  For those not familiar with Caribbean or tropical sport fish, a permit is a vertically-flattened, high-speed swimming, flats-crab-and-shrimp-feeding fish related to jacks and pompanos.  It’s a sport fish, and we grabbed a very quick photo and performed a smooth release.

Later that morning, we moved to the true flats, about 2 ft of water, and my son watched and waited while small bonnethead sharks (smaller relatives of the hammerhead shark) move up the current towards our boat.  A quick and very accurate cast of a shrimp in front of them and he hooked up for a wild ride.  In this shallow water, the trick during that blazing initial run is to raise the rod as high as you can in the hopes of preventing the fish from wrapping your fragile line around a piece of coral in the sand.  He got it up high, began to gain line, and brought a ten pound shark up next to the boat before it broke away: sharks have such sharp teeth that a thin wire leader near the hook is required to assure a catch, and this would scare off a bonefish (our primary target) and hence we were not using one.  Boating a shark would therefore be a much bigger challenge and he did well to get it close.  Nothing for the rest of the morning, although we saw bonefish and sharks, but none came within casting distance.

Two days later, we are out again, hunting for bonefish again, and again, skunked.  We moved around, and eventually started working on some little sharks, but it was not to be, and we went home mildly frustrated but still riding a high from that permit, and happy to be outside, in the Keys, on the water, and learning a LOT about flats fishing.  We’ll be back soon, we always are, and now we can add flats-fishing to our repertoire.

I hope you enjoyed this little departure from dogs and cats and their trials and triumphs; let me know if you’d like to hear more about animal behavior, science, and field experiences by clicking on the Comments button below.  If you have general animal behavior questions, or questions about the science of animal behavior, send me a note, and I will try to address them in future blogs.  If you have a great flats-fishing story, send it along as well.

I just got back from a three week vacation in the Florida Keys. Even on vacation, I am involved in animal behavior. I grew up in the Keys and left there when I was about 14 years old, returned several times in the ‘70’s while I was in college on the East Coast, but in 2002, I had not returned since a brief visit in 1982. In 2002, with a wife and a nine year old son who had never seen Florida, much less the Keys, we returned, and we all fell in love (again, for me) with the string of 142 islands extending south of Miami to Key West, a mere 90 miles from Havana (130 miles from Miami!). It’s got a laid back Caribbean attitude, the feeling of small towns and islands (those who love the San Juan Islands will know what I mean: I get the same island feeling there), beautiful weather, and yet, U.S. amenities, currency, domestic airfare status, language, and all of the other good (and of course, bad) things that go with being part of the United States.

And it has the best all-around fishing in the world. I grew up fishing the Keys, of course, where you catch something within minutes (seconds, even) of dropping your line in the water, where you never know what you’ll catch (snapper or grouper one second, a parrotfish the next, and the next, a shark). There are at least four fundamental styles of fishing from which to choose: flats (the shallow warm-water home of bonefish, permit and sharks), backcountry (fishing the mangrove swamps of the Everglades for redfish, sea trout, and groupers), the reef (home of snapper, grouper, jacks, and barracuda), and off-shore (the big-game fishing of Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway for dolphinfish, sailfish, tuna, and marlin).

My wife and son and I enjoyed our first fishing so much, from bridges throughout the Keys, that we bought a 17-foot boat that we keep in dry storage in Marathon, our favorite part of the Keys. We have begun to improve our proficiency at reef fishing, the type of fishing which requires the least skill and specialized equipment. I view, in many ways, fishing as simply aquatic applied animal behavior. You have to know your species, their typical behavior patterns and haunts, well enough to be able to predict how they will react to certain stimuli, like oh, say, a live shrimp or a feathered lure dangled in front of them. You need to know a lot about their sensory systems, movement patterns, food habits and triggers for feeding behavior, and of course, you need to apply this information appropriately to be successful. The same can be said of hunting, or of wildlife photography (another hobby of my son’s). For a professional animal behaviorist who loves his work, what’s not to like.

So for my recent 50th birthday (aaah, that’s a big one), I promised myself that I would begin to move my fishing expertise to a new level, by hiring a guide(s) to explore some other kinds of Keys fishing on my next visit; indeed, to plan our next trip around some serious fishing experiences. And thus, three weeks in the Keys, with an emphasis on fishing. We got our boat in the water, of course, and had a blast fishing the reefs of both the Atlantic Ocean and Florida Bay: snapper of three species, houndfish, grunts, chubs, and more. Even my mother, in her very spry 70’s, came out and fished (although she says she was along just to watch the sunsets!). But the big treats included an off-shore trip on a 28-foot twin outboard powerboat rigged with multiple trolling rods and lures, where we did what is called ‘run and gun’ for offshore species like dolphinfish and tuna. This involves heading out beyond the reef, about nine miles offshore, and watching for ocean birds which have located schools of baitfish. Where the birds are attacking the baitfish from above, there are usually big-game fish attacking from below (aha, more applied animal behavior!). We spent six hours from 9-18 miles offshore in the Gulf Stream, in 5-8 foot swells, straining our eyes at the horizon to see feeding birds, running to meet up with them, and trolling our (hopefully enticing) lures nearby. The result: seven dolphinfish and five small tunas, all 6-8 pounds each and all great eating. There is NOTHING like tuna salad made with truly fresh tuna!

Two other mornings were early ones: flats fishing, the epitome of stalking in which you are positioning yourself on flats that are 2-3 feet deep, and watching for visible signs of fish to move across the flats: bonefish, rays and skates, permit, redfish, sharks, even tarpon over 100 pounds, all on the flats to feed on shrimp, crabs, and clams and snails. My experience flats-fishing the Keys in my next blog.

Amy and I had signed up for sessions 2 and 3 back-to-back. This was 12 days of class with a 3-day break. All this learning is tiring, and session 3 is the longest of the sessions at 7 days. Still, it was fun and stands out in my memory.

Our task was to create a fixed behavior chain which, at the end of the week, our hens would perform with no external cues or reinforcements until she crossed her finish line. The behavior chain was built around the hen proceeding over a gymnastic apparatus specially built for this session. The apparatus consisted of two towers, each with a platform around its post at about a foot above the table. The two towers were placed about three feet and a “balance beam” or catwalk connected them. Finally, a ladder led diagonally to each tower. The hen would climb one ladder, proceed around the *outside* of the post on the platform (instead of jumping straight to the catwalk), move across the catwalk, circle the outside of the other tower, and then descend the second ladder. This sounds complicated enough, but in addition to this sequence, each hen had to perform some other behaviors during her journey on the apparatus. We had a choice of several behaviors. Between the two birds, we had to pick five behaviors: One hen would do two and the other would perform three. One behavior had to involve a cue, and one had to be indiscrete.

I assigned the cueing behavior and one other to my novice hen. Unfortunately, apparently as a result of prior training mistakes by other students, she would not stop pecking the target without a cue. Her extinction bursts for this behavior become more and more extreme as the days passed and it became apparent that the behavior was unusable. In the end, she did her “racecourse” with only one appended behavior.

My experienced hen did not run into such a snag. The three behaviors I settled on for her were to pull a rubber hand which was attached to the edge of the table a certain distance before releasing it; to peck a specific colored target; and to pick up a small stuffed toy from a dish and move it to the table. The rubber band pulling behavior is harder than it sounds because it closely resembles a normal chicken hunting behavior of pulling a worm or grub from the ground. Hens instinctively want to keep pulling until the worm comes loose, so letting it go can be tough. Also, while you are trying to build the length of the pull, she might get snapped while letting go and become nervous of the rubber band. The goal length of the pull was 11 inches, which involved quite a hard, prolonged effort. Teaching the color target selection wasn’t too hard since it was something I had taught before, and the hen had learned (from other students) before. Finally, it seemed that my hen had never before been exposed to the behavior of moving the little “Piglet” stuffed figure from the dish to the table. Teaching this behavior took some time.

Getting my hen doing all these behaviors reliably was not my only task. I also had to get her to move through the racecourse apparatus in the proper order. The hardest part for most of us was convincing our hens to circle to the outside of the posts instead of hopping straight to the catwalk (for the first post) or back to the ladder from the catwalk (for the second post). We worked on this by chaining both forwards and backwards. I’d start my hen at the bottom of the up ladder and click her for climbing it. Then I’d use the principle of feeding to promote your training goals and feed her at the outside edge of the first platform. If she associated the outside of the platform with the food delivery, she’d be more likely to proceed in that direction instead of taking the shortcut. Getting her across the balance beam, again, was not difficult, and then the second platform demanded more careful fine timing and feeding. I’d also start her on the second platform to build up a smooth finish, and so on. (This is backward chaining.)

I had to decide where to have my hen perform each added task. I ended up putting the rubber band pull first. This was risky as hens can get really stuck on pulling rubber bands and if she got stuck, she would blow the entire sequence! However, I needed the other available spots for other behaviors. One behavior had to take place on a platform so I put my targets on the first platform. Finally, I added the Piglet-in-a-dish behavior at the finish line, past the end of the down ladder. This was the hardest of the three added tasks for my hen and I wanted the rest of the course under her belt so she would not get stuck if she failed the Piglet toss.

The day of the test came and my turn took my by surprise. My hen had worked on each of the three behaviors in place… but never at the same time! I had *no* idea if she actually knew and could perform the whole sequence. My job was to stand at the end of the table with the finish line, holding the food cup, and not moving or speaking at all until I could click for the last behavior. My partner placed my hen next to her rubber band and off she went.

I honestly don’t remember much about the next 40 seconds as she progressed through the course. I am pretty sure she didn’t pull the rubber band to 11 inches, but she probably made it to 8 or 9. She went around her tower, pecked the correct target, crossed the catwalk, circled the far target, walked down the second ladder, picked up Piglet, and deposited him on the table. Click! Treat! I was pretty stunned. She had done it just about perfectly.

One of Bob Bailey’s “Chicken Camp Shirts” has the word “Believe” emblazoned on the back of it. Though this sounds somewhat religious, it’s not. It’s just a reminder that the techniques we were learning are very well known principles of learning, and they work, as has been shown in laboratories and real life situations over and over. Watching my hen correctly perform this long sequence was pretty convincing! I will never again dismiss chickens as stupid.

Greta Kaplan, CPDT

In the first session of Chicken Camp, “Discrimination,” we taught our hens to choose and peck a colored target. Since the hens had done this before, they already had learned to peck a specific color. So, we tested them by placing the three identical targets (other than color: red, yellow and blue) in front of each hen. My hen pecked yellow, so I removed it. Then she pecked red, probably indicating that she had, at some time in the past, been reinforced for pecking yellow. Blue therefore became my new “hot target” and my job was to teach her to peck only the blue target. Our goal was to see if, eventually, she would refuse to peck the yellow and red targets *even if the blue target was not on the table, for 20 seconds.*

Certain rules applied. We could not use lures to get the behavior: No hiding a grain of food behind the blue target to get her interested in that part of the table. However, I could remove the blue target to permit her to extinguish the yellow and red pecking behaviors. If she visibly paused, withholding pecks, I would quickly slide the blue target into place so that she could peck it and earn reinforcement. This illustrates the power of the Premack Principle: A higher value behavior reinforces a lower value behavior! And by contrast, if she pecked the wrong target after a certain point, I could quickly pull away the blue target to remove the opportunity for reinforcement for a while. This is negative punishment and it reduces the likelihood of pecking the wrong target.

Once we had switched our hens to the new hot target, we performed a stimulus reversal. Until now, we had been working our hens in 30 and 60 second periods. For the stimulus reversal, we would shape nonstop until the hen had met criteria for selecting the new target color (in my case, that was red, since that had been less preferred to begin with). It took seven minutes for my advanced bird to reverse her stimuli, and that shaping session was wonderfully fun. One important lesson here: Since the old hot target was present, the first step was to click *any* behavior other than pecking the hot target — even just holding her head up away from the target was clickable, and was rewarded. Waiting for her to choose another target would have taken a long time and created “ratio strain.” The low rate of reinforcement would have reduced her interest in working and she might have wandered off or perhaps engaged in frustration behaviors. Always choose criteria at which your animal can succeed!

During the second session of Chicken Camp, “Cueing and Criteria,” among other things, we worked on attaching a cue to a behavior. Amy, my training buddy and roommate, had a beautiful success with this. She trained one of her hens to circle in place. She then taught the hen that the cue for doing this was a pen, held vertically. As long as the pen was in this vertical position, the hen was to keep circling. During her demonstration, Amy placed her hen on the table. The hen stood there for a moment, waiting for information. Then, with a very still body, Amy lifted the pen into the vertical position. The hen immediately started spinning in place. She spun in place for about 15 seconds, and then Amy lowered the pen. The hen stopped, and received a single click and treat. It was a very clean demonstration. Amy had attached this cue in just one morning’s worth of training sessions. Attaching cues is not particularly hard, once you know the trick: First you get the animal reliably doing the behavior, and then you deliver the cue when you know the animal is about to perform the behavior. You then click and treat when the animal performs. After multiple repetitions, the animal learns that the cue predicts that the specific behavior will be reinforced, and so performs that behavior when she perceives the cue. The flashy part of Amy’s demonstration was the indiscrete nature of the behavior and the cue: the behavior was to continue until the cue went away.

In my next entry, I’ll talk about what we did in our third session, “Chaining.”

Of all the education I’ve experienced in becoming and being a dog trainer, the one that stands out most is what’s known as “Chicken Camp.” More properly called “Cross-Species Operant Conditioning Training Workshop” (you can see why people prefer to call it Chicken Camp), this workshop teaches advanced, high-quality clicker training skills to the human students. The training subjects are chickens: all hens, in fact. Each student works with one naive bird, who’s only been working Chicken Camp for 1-2 years, and one experienced bird who may have 6 or 8 years of Camp under her feathers. Chicken Camp’s format evolved over the dozen-plus years of its existence, and the four sessions I took (the complete curriculum) were Discrimination, Cueing and Criteria, Chaining, and Teaching Operant Conditioning. Instructor Bob Bailey has also given shorter, more condensed workshops at other locations.

Bob Bailey (and, before their respective deaths, Marian Breland Bailey and Keller Breland) spent many decades operating Animal Behavior Enterprises, a company originally started in the 1940s with the crazy idea of applying Skinner’s research to practical situations. ABE worked in military, commercial and academic contexts, training 15,000 animals of over 140 species during its four-plus decades in business. Using almost exclusively positive reinforcement, ABE made a profit training animals (and teaching people to train animals).

At Chicken Camp, some of the hens are — ahem — more assertive than others. Some of the more skittish humans found this offputting! We’d alternate time in the training room with time in the lecture room. In the training room, we’d take one hen out of her cage, set her on the table, and perform the training task of the moment. Then we’d rapidly switch hens. Clean technique, careful record keeping, and pinpoint observation skills were stressed. Before we were allowed to touch a clicker, we practiced delivering food to imaginary hens: First with an empty cup, then with a cup containing the food the hens would receive. Then we worked with a clicker and a full cup… still no chicken, though! Not until the second half of the first day were we introduced to and allowed to work with our chickens.

Chickens are ideal training subjects for refining your training skills. They are very fast moving and very literal; also, they can eat a huge amount in one day, so you can perform a great many repetitions. At the end of the day, their crops were like baseballs! They are also easy to keep safely and comfortably all summer in a training facility (a hotel parking lot, actually). Hens don’t care about praise or petting and they are not interested in human attention or approval. They are working for their food. You have to be precise and clear. You learn that “You get what you click, not what you intend.” If you click her for pecking a centimeter away from the target, she will consistently peck a centimeter away from the target. Most dogs will actually try to figure out what you want, and will pick up your frustration if you are making training mistakes; they pick up an awful lot of slack. Hens pick up no slack! And if you forget to feed them after clicking, some of the more seasoned ones will jump up and peck your arm. They are tough taskmistresses.

Chickens may not be intellectual geniuses, so perhaps the fact that they were able to learn some very complex tasks demonstrates the power of this training technology. I will talk more about that in my next entry.