Dog Community

Advanced clicker training for calmness?

Posted : 10/24/2006 6:42:32 PM

This isn't really a dog thread, but I thought I'd put it here because it IS a training thread.

I've got this rabbit that I rescued a few months ago. She'd had a pretty sub-par life when I got her, not much handling and the handling that she did get usually involved picking her up by the scruff of the neck. I mean, we know this can be a little rough with dogs, but rabbits are a small prey animal and when predators grab them, they usually grab them at the back of the neck. So Bonnie has been largely less open to handling than my wild hare for the past few months. She just wouldn't let me touch her at all. I'd been working on her with raisins as treats and had got her to the point that she would let me touch her nose and under her chin without getting offended and running away, but she still freaked out if my hand went above her eyes.

A few weeks ago I started clicker training with her with the intention of trying to get through to her that it's okay for me to touch her. I especially wanted to be able to brush her because she's shedding right now. With 1 or 2 sessions of about a minute or 2 every day for the last few weeks, we've achieved what months of feeding her treats did not achieve. Last night she pushed her head into my hand and let me scratch right up around her ears, and the night before she let me brush her head. I'm so chuffed with her. It was a real warm and fuzzy moment, having her let me touch her like that for the first time ever.

It worked so well with her that I'm thinking of trying it with the hare, Kit, to try to encourage him to be calmer. He's so touchy that I've had times when someone has done something stupid around him, like loomed over him, that's instilled a phobia in him that has taken months of careful work to get him over. I think I can use moving out of his space as a reward, seeing as he's often ambivalent about treats, but always very sensitive about his space.

I know there's a book called Click to Calm, but the stupid thing about living in Australia is that these books can be pretty hard to find. I've found a website that has it, but they charge a lot and I currently have no income, and I'm not sure it would help me with Kit. I'm wondering if anyone can give me some advice on how to proceed with Kit? Is it feasible to use moving out of his space as the reward? Because to do that, he'd have to be feeling nervous and anxious in the first place, so I can't clicker train when he's in a calm state of mind.

spiritdogs

Posted : 10/25/2006 11:51:08 PM

I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, but you absolutely can use "anything the rabbit is willing to work for" as the reward.
With dogs, for example, that are not food-motivated, you could use chasing a squirrel as the reward, or getting out the door, or a game of tug. So, if moving out of a space is a "reward" or "reinforcer" for your rabbit, the answer would be "yes". If moving out of the space is the desired behavior, then no. The rabbit should get something *it* wants as a reward. Was that a clear enough explanation?

Scout in Canada

Posted : 10/26/2006 6:14:09 AM

I bought Click to Calm from Amazon.com - is there an Amazon site for Australia?

corvus

Posted : 10/26/2006 6:06:28 PM

I'm not so sure Kit is willing to 'work for' anything on a reliable basis. I've taught him to stand on his hind legs for raisins, but if he doesn't feel like standing on his hind legs, he doesn't do it and isn't at all concerned that he gets no raisin.

My target behaviour, I guess, is for him to relax. My idea is that by making the click a reliable predictor that pressure is going to be taken off him, he will learn to associate the click with relaxing. It could be a bit of a stretch, but I'm thinking that maybe I can improve his quality of life by teaching him to relax, if you like. He gets most frightened of unpredicatable things and is most comfortable in predictable situations. I have no idea if I can get through to him just by rewarding him by taking pressure off him, but I'd be interested to see if it helped him cope better with living in a very unnatural environment. Does that make better sense? Am I insane?

Scout, we don't have an Amazon site, sadly. Maybe I can get my boyfriend to pick me up a copy, as he's in LA at the moment.

glenmar

Posted : 10/26/2006 6:28:30 PM

Oh please no raisins!! Grapes and raisins are BAD for dogs and I can't recall why (old age?) but they can be quite dangerous. Not sure if its the chemicals, the processing or what but maybe you could try craisens? Those are dried cranberries and rather yummy....

spiritdogs

Posted : 10/26/2006 7:20:19 PM

Raisins can cause acute kidney failure - don't use them!!!!!!!!

corvus

Posted : 10/27/2006 6:25:29 PM

*giggles* Kit is a hare, not a dog. Grapes and bananas are addictive to rabbits and hares, so I'm careful with them anyway. My dog gets the odd raisin when she's about when I'm giving treats to the buns, but she far prefers dried apricots, as it happens.

I found a Snopes article on raisins and grapes and dogs here [linkhttp://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/raisins.asp]http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/raisins.asp[/link]

I doubt I'd have a problem seeing as my pup has eaten grapes and raisins in very small amounts occassionally in the past, but I'm certainly not going to be using raisins as a treat, so no need to worry.

Vinia

Posted : 10/27/2006 6:37:34 PM

Melissa, have you tried classical conditioning?

This is just off the top of my head, so I dont know how helpful/effective these ideas might be:

You could just let him habituate (get used) to you being around- though this might involve a lot of sitting around, doing nothing and being very quiet. hehe. Maybe if he gets used to that, then you can slowly up the noise/activity level?
Or maybe you could associate something, (maybe a certain type/piece of music?) with calmness by having it present when he's generally peaceful and happy, and then have that present when you're working with him- this might make things a bit easier...

Does Kit show obvious signs of stress/fear (I don't know much about hares)? I can imagine it'd be difficult if it's hard to differentiate clearly between calmness and anxiety.

corvus

Posted : 10/27/2006 7:24:20 PM

I've been using classical conditioning with him right from the start, but my problem with it is that I question his ability to generalise it. He knows what all my signals mean, but even if I tell someone to use the same signals it seems to mean nothing to him. We've had the most success with my mother, but I suspect that's because our voices sound very similar and she says a lot of the same things in the same way that I do, and acts in similar ways. What I'm after is a universal signal that will sound the same from anyone.

What I was trying to work out was whether you can even train an animal when they're feeling stressed out. Kit's stress levels escalate pretty quickly and it's not in his nature to try to control them seeing as hares rely on being able to run very fast when they're frightened. In a way, being frightened is a really essential state for them. Even so, Kit has learnt to restrain himself. As long as the pressure doesn't come on too strong too fast, Kit can still think. He's learnt that his instinctive mad dash doesn't really work indoors in small rooms and you can watch him pausing frequently to try to think of where to go to hide rather than just blindly running in a random direction.

Having thought about it some more, now, I'm torn between whether I should be approaching this with operative conditioning or classical conditioning. Would I have the best luck targeting calm behaviour with a clicker and then leaving him when he was calm as a reward? Or would it be better to use a click as a universal signal that I'm going to leave him. If I did the latter, would I have to leave when he was calm for him to make the connection?

Sorry guys, it's a bit of a complicated problem and it's not even dog related. I just have no one else to discuss it with and I figured the principles for dog training are more or less the same for all animals.

Vinia

Posted : 10/27/2006 8:32:13 PM

hm... it is a tricky one, isn't it!

Maybe it's worth considering which cues would be most salient/obvious for Kit- are hares' primarily visual, auditory or olfactory? it could be perhaps he's not generalising because something is glaringly different between you and someone else, besides the cues.

I would think that once the stress and "flight" mode kicks in, there isn't much point in trying to teach him anything, because most likely he's just thinking about how to get away.

Have you tried just waiting it out once he freaks and starts running around? It's probably not the most positive approach, but presumably he'll eventually figure out that a) he can't escape anywhere, and b) he's not going to get eaten.

I don't think you have to choose between operant and classical conditioning- they're not mutually exclusive! [

] the option that intuitively appeals to me the most is marking calm behaviour with the clicker, then leaving when he's calm...

corvus

Posted : 10/28/2006 12:58:07 AM

Thanks Vinia, you've been very helpful.

Flooding him might work, but I'm not keen to try it because I've seen him when someone or something is really frightening him and won't go away and his panic tends to escalate until he's making vertical leaps of around 2 metres, knocking things down, and crashing into walls and windows. I'm genuinely very worried that he would hurt himself. I also know from experience that it takes months to get him over something that really freaked him out like that, so yeah, not real keen. [

] He's a timid boy.

You're quite right, they don't have to be mutually exclusive! When I think about it, I'm not sure he would distinguish between me clicking and leaving when he's calm or me clicking and leaving whenever I'm planning to leave anyway. I think I'll try clicking whenever I'm leaving when he's calm, and then if that seems to be getting through, I'll move on to trying to reward calm behaviour by clicking and leaving.... I think. [

]

It's hard to say what cues I should be using. I think auditory because I'm not sure how good his eyesight is. Plus I've been using that so far. He definitely knows what my voice and my footsteps sound like, but when I came home from 6 months overseas, he wasn't convinced it was me back from the dead until he'd spent a day watching my every movement like a hawk. I can never be sure, but I think he was looking for familiar behavioural patterns. Which blows my mind if I'm right. He listened to me, smelt me, and watched me, but it wasn't until I rescued him from his marrauding bunny neighbour that he finally accepted that it was me. All very peculiar. I could write a thesis on that little guy.

Thanks again for your help. [

]

Vinia

Posted : 10/28/2006 1:39:36 AM

No problemo [

] I really enjoy trying to figure out behavioural solutions to problems, so I'm happy to help any time!

Your plan sounds like a good one- I was thinking about it more and think perhaps classical conditioning techniques might be more effective in this case seeing as fear and anxiety is very physiological/primitive, and the extent to which Kit will be able to control it might be quite limited (just a thought, anyway)

Good luck with it! I hope you keep us/me posted [

]