First 'official' day of ClickerExpo:
Early Morning session: Reaching the Animal Mind: Opening Plenary Session
Introduction by Aaron Clayton: 46 states represented; Several countries;Human Societies and Shelters sending multiple staff members!! Amazing to see so many different people from different backgrounds. Conference was SOLD OUT!
Late morning session: Smart Reinforcement with Ken Ramirez: All about reinforcement options, and how to use reinforcement schedules and introduce new reinforcers.
I'm all about new reinforcers- seeing as I work with a breed that is "difficult to train"; "stubborn"; etc. Its not that they are difficult to train, or stubborn (o.k., well- they are but that isn't really a training issue) Based on my training experiences, it boils down to this: it is difficult to find reinforcers that they are crazy about consistently. Sure, food works some of the time..and toys some of the time- but my biggest challenge with training Oscar past the basics was finding novel ways to reinforce him. One seminar that I went to said to essentially remove EVERYTHING from the dogs environment that they found reinforcing (including access to other dogs) and use these to reinforce behaviors you want. I thought about this, and while it makes sense- I did not want to become the center of my dogs universe. Yes, this is the point to an extent while moving into more complex behaviors and competition- However the reality is that its not practical- I'm not with my dog 24/7 although I'd like to be. I also PERSONALLY don't think it is fair to my dog. I then went to a seminar by Kathy Sdao which went over introducing new reinforcers and how she spents just as much time introducing new reinforcers as she does training new behaviors! This got me really thinking- I don't have to remove all reinforcers- just make new ones that only come from me!!!
Ken is an amazing speaker, and an amazing trainer. I love that he gets really excited about training (if you've ever seen videos of him working with his dog- you'll know what I mean). He LOVES to train, and it comes across when he speaks. He talked about how to introduce new reinforcers, how to evaluate reinforcers (the key thing they use to evaluate this is focus...ha ha I'm toast with ANY reinforcer with Oscar LOL), and examples of how conditioned reinforcers have been helpful in dealing with some of the animals at the Shedd Aquarium.
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