UNT’s ORCA Art and Science of Animal Training Conference is a one day seminar held in Denton, TX. It also known at the Wicked Minds Conference. This year’s presenters included Dr. Joe Layng, Bob Bailey, Phung Luu, Steve White, Alexandra Kurland, Kay Laurence, Ken Ramirez, and Steve Aibel. The goal of this blog post is to cover the key points of each presenter’s topics for those that were not able to attend. Please note that I didn’t record or write down everything the speakers said. These are notes that I wrote down during the conference and are not exact quotes.
Dr. Joe Layng is a scientist that has created an online program for children to help them learn to read. He explained that the terminology used in the psychology and training field has become somewhat confusing over the years….quoting 4 or 5 pieces of work that defined contingencies in different ways, but never really fully defining the term. I’ll refer to his presentation as the “chair talk” for years to come. He displayed many slides that showed that the idea of a concept really needs to be broken down as specific as you can make it. His example was a chair. Chairs have backs, but are not the same color. They have legs, but not always four legs. They usually make the person sitting in it have their legs extended at a 90 degree angle, unless it is something like a high chair. A chair should also not be confused with a stool. These are general concepts that usually people understand, but it is something we really need to think about when we are training and teaching others. How much they know should not be an assumption. He also mentioned feedback and when it should be administered. Confirmatory feedback is immediate. If you have a dog or trainer that is going to perform the behavior immediately after the previous behavior, feedback should be confirmatory. Another example of feedback is instructional- it should precede the next occurrence of the task. If you are at the end of a dog training class, you might give some notes of what to work on at home, but you may want to hold the feedback for the behavior they were working on until the next class, right before they work on that particular behavior again. Dr. Layng also suggested reading “Analyzing Instructional Content” by Tiemann and Markle.
Bob Bailey is a biologist and long time trainer. His well know quote (which came from Keller Breland) is “training is simple, but not easy.” He has trained many complex behaviors over the years, but stressed that they were all trained by breaking the behavior into very small steps. He expanded on the chair presentation and discussed training ravens for the government. They would send the ravens into buildings to retrieve objects and had to train them to go to different areas of a room. He stated it became difficult when they started to think about how they need to define a chair vs. a recliner or a desk vs. a credenza in order for the raven to fully understand what they were asking. Bob also made a great quote about behavior. “The only behavior you can change is your own.” We influence our animal’s behavior, but at the end of the day it is still their choice to change their behavior. He also stressed there are two things you should focus on while training: What do I want? And What do I have? I found it very interesting that Bob Bailey has never owned a dog in his life. He trains a lot of dog owners and dog trainers and has found that many trainers lack good mechanic skills (he sees this when they come to chicken clicker camp). His suggestion is to video tape your training and learn from it.
Phung Luu is a bird trainer and zoo behavior consultant. He focused on Modal Action Patterns in animals. These are behaviors that animals usually exhibit naturally or genetically. Phung described a great story about a condor that was not in the training program at his facility because he was overly aggressive. Phung took on the challenge to try to work with the bird in between training the other birds. He took the steps that many dog trainers use to work with aggressive/reactive dogs. He would throw meat into the cage to build up a trust and slowly worked his way into the cage and finally was able to bring the condor into one of their public shows a year later. He trained a behavior that was a Modal Action Pattern. He decided to shape a wing pump, which is a naturally occurring behavior in birds and in his mind, was a good behavior to work on because the bird wouldn’t be so focused on biting him. There was a video after the story about two condors in a zoo that did not like each other and he again used the wing pump behavior to build up trust between the two birds until they were able to be in close proximity with each other.
Steve White is a K9 officer from Seattle. He began his presentation about discussing the idea of tribalism between trainers today. Every form of training seems to be the best form of training. Steve stressed how important it is to take data of your training. It not only helps you see results and what you need to work on, but it is also a way to show clients the progression of your method of training. It should be a way to give an idea of how long it might take to train a certain behavior and it is also a way to show mistakes. In the world of dog training, where it might be faster to use some methods, it will be great to have data to show that using other methods might take longer initially, but will be more beneficial in the long run. He made an interesting comment about dogs being cheap. If a dog figures an easier way to reinforcement, they will go that route…and humans are the same way.
Alexandra Kurland is a well know clicker horse trainer. Her presentation was based around taking breaks during training sessions. She made a great point in saying that breaks should happen during clickable moments and breaks, at the same time, can act as reinforcers. Breaks can also make a good transition to a new criteria. She also stated that breaks do not have to be very long, just a couple of seconds, and it does not have to completely stop a training session. During the presentation, Alexandra stated that while putting this presentation together she found that this topic might be a very good research topic for ORCA’s research students. She is curious to know if taking a break actually betters the performance of the behavior and if break effectiveness differs between species.
Kay Laurence is a dog trainer from England. She has many border collies and stated that she has not taken her dogs to a training class since 1976. She trains in her house or in her dog barn. Her presentation was about the difference between training using targeting, luring, or free-shaping. The three behaviors she taught with three of her dogs were walking around a cone, walking along a PVC pipe on the ground and “paddling” in two cat litter boxes that were taped together. She showed videos of all of the training sessions and the progression of the behaviors. After all of it, she showed a video of the “finished” behaviors. If you did not know the back story of the training, it is very difficult to know how each behavior was trained. It was noticeable that each behavior was slightly different though. Kay also stated that in training, there may be certain behaviors that can be more effectively trained using luring and shaping. Her new phrase of choice is “going operant.”
Ken Ramirez is a marine mammal trainer at the Shedd Aquarium in Illinois and this year he asked Steve Aibel (Sea World) to also speak during the presentation. This presentation showed some key elements from the aquatic world that have been passed down to other species training communities. Ken discussed the idea of LRS. This concept was created by the Sea World parks and stands for Least Reinforcing Scenario. It is a couple of second break when the animal doesn’t given the behavior asked. The trainer tries to make a neutral environment during this time and then goes straight into asking for another behavior. He showed a video of a sea lion from the Shedd that he works with and how he executes the LRS with him. It was such a short break in the training, that the normal person would not have realized it had happened. He also showed a video of him using a LRS with his dog. Ken went on to state that he has seen that dog trainers are a little reluctant to use LRS, but that they probably have used it without knowing. Steve Aibel from Sea World San Antonio then discussed the idea of balance for the animals at their parks. He stated that all animals need three types of needs: physical, social, and mental. His coworker from Sea World, Mike Pool, went on to explain some acronyms they use to define what is needed for balance. The first acronym is HELPRS (Husbandry, Exercise, Learn, Play, Relationship, Show) and the second was VRRV (Variable, Ratio, Reinforcement, Variety). All of the marine mammal trainers stressed the importance of having a relationship with the animal you are working with and making sure the trainer and animal are having fun.
At the end of the conference there was a Panel Q&A. Dr. Jesus Rosales Ruiz chose one question from the attendees and the entire panel answered. I am not really sure what the initial question was, but it was along the lines of whether or not they thought it was beneficial in training for the trainer to have fun and if it effected the outcome of the behavior being trained. Bob Bailey stated he did not know. He didn’t believe there was any scientific data to prove that it bettered the behavior. Ken Ramirez stated that in his line of work it is beneficial to have fun and build the relationship with the animal and that the idea of having fun could possibly be turned into a conditioned reinforcer. Bob Bailey went on to say that during his years of training for his company, he had more fun with the process of training than the relationship with the animal and found it more beneficial to see a result at the end of the training. There was a lot of back and forth between the panel, but it also presented another great opportunity for another research project for the ORCA students. Steve White did mention joining the Observation Skills for Dog Trainers Facebook group (I’m not sure where that reference came into the discussion, but it does look like an interesting group).
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