Clicker Expo Day 2

Yesterday was fantastic! I do love Clicker Expo! The online version is obviously different than the previous ones, but the sessions have been just as great.

Yesterday I managed 3 sessions before I fell asleep (the conference is held in the USA, so the sessions are held late afternoon and night Danish time).

Susan G. Friedman, PhD about Functional assessment:
Functional assessment is the process of developing hypotheses about the functional relationships between behavior and the environment. The hypotheses generated from a sound functional assessment improve understanding of behavior and the ability to predict the conditions under which it will occur. Thus, functional assessment improves the interventions designed to decrease problem behavior, increase appropriate alternative behaviors, and teach new skills.

Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz: Don't Fight Extinction
Clicker trainers often talk about first teaching a behavior and then later adding a cue for that behavior. However, learning a behavior is never independent of the environment. As soon as you begin teaching a behavior, it starts acquiring cues. The presence of these environmental cues tells the animal to engage in the behavior. If you try to teach a new behavior under these same environmental conditions, the learning will be slow. This is because the cues for the original behavior will interfere with the acquisition of the new behavior. The first behavior will have to be extinguished before you can teach the new behavior. You will be “fighting” extinction. Instead, you can speed up learning by changing the environmental cues.

Kathy Sdao about managing reactive dogs.
The dog Smudge has a history of barking and lunging at dogs—and sometimes unfamiliar people—when he's on leash. Over time, through practicing a cue-transfer exercise, Smudge has learned that those triggers are actually cues for him to do a fluent behavior (i.e., hand targeting). 

In 30 minutes the first session of day 2 will begin and whilst waiting for that, I played with the Virtual Photo Booth to make my picture for today.

I have spent the morning training dogs and taking them for a walk (and trying to make them pose nicely for the picture I needed for this blip - Xmas was not in the mood for posing!), so they will be calm and comfortable for my afternoon and night of online nerding with dog training :-)

See you tomorrow
Emmy and the Hazyland Boys