ABC'S: ANIMAL BEHAVIOR

CONCERNS & SOLUTIONS

A Question & Answer Forum For Animal Professionals

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Welcome to the ABC's! Animal Behavior Concerns & Solutions is an animal behavior column written by animal behaviorist and animal trainer, Diana L. Guerrero. This section is dedicated to animal training techniques for all animals and pets, and topics related to operant conditioning and reinforcement. This column is about common training errors, such as repeating commands. For pet training please visit the pet sections, see our pet behavior booklets in the shop, or click here for enrollment information for classes and teleseminars.

Common Animal Training Errors 101:
Repeating Names, Commands & Other Training Errors

QUESTION
This may seem very basic, but how often should the animals name and/or command for the desired behavior be used in requesting an animal to perform a certain action? Can the animals adapt between different styles of training?

ANSWER
Basics are important to build a solid foundation! This question involves shifting Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) and the inability to get them to cooperate for all the trainers.

The trainers are having difficulties in establishing consistency within their team. Consistency is what it is all about. If you are all not working together and sticking to your guns then you are sabotaging any progress.

Can the animals adapt between different styles of training?
Yes and No! Some animals can differentiate between trainers. This can get complicated depending on the species you are working with and whether or not the animal is a veteran to training or a novice.

Inconsistency and lack of clarity can really botch up a training program. Frustration and confusion contribute to aggression and so without consistency in your team you may well be on your way to having some serious problems.

If your team is not working together then you are making your jobs harder and more complicated than they need to be. Some people have a greater predisposition to training than others so you may want to consider moving duties around to accommodate these talents.

How often should the animals name and/or command for the desired behavior be used in requesting an animal to perform a certain action?
In my work with zoos and pet owners I see the same high verbal challenges. One of the worst is the tendency to talk too much! Repeating the name of an animal or the command just teaches the animal to ignore you.

This is amusing since it is entertaining to have people repeat commands over and over and over again, follow their animals, or bend, stretch or contort in order to get the animal's attention! Of course the animal just ignores them.

The whole idea behind training an animal is to achieve compliant behavior and the animal's attention without such efforts! I encourage using the ask, tell, take action method. (It is the same as the 1, 2, 3 used with little kids. ) You will not ask more than twice before taking action.

Use the name of the animal to get its attention and buy it a couple of seconds. (You may initially have to train this by rewarding attention or eye contact when you say their name.) Then give the command in a normal tone of voice, use your cue or discriminative stimulus at the same time. Wait for compliance. If you do not get it, try again. If there is no response then you go into action. Ideally you give a time-out, regroup and then try again later. (You may need to assess your positioning, hierarchical influences if these are problems.)

There are other common training errors beyond the tendency to be highly verbal. These include: giving into fear and not working through situations, relying on consistent schedules of reinforcement instead of progressing, and lack of understanding and preplanning. Let's take a look at these since I suspect they are at the root of the challenges you are facing.

Fear by not working through situations.
One of the most common training errors I see in novice trainers is the tendency to want to shortcut the process of training. Back in an earlier column (1996), I talked about a dolphin trainer that forced the issue with an animal. He had the option of taking the several weeks to accomplish getting a voluntary beaching behavior but did not want to.

The result was that the firm lost six months of training progress because he forced the animal to do something that it was not ready to do. The dolphin became uncooperative and all its behaviors broke down because of the attempts to shortcut. This "get it done immediately" attitude stems from an old style of animal management and training. Many people still fall back into attempts to force animals to comply or to scare them into cooperation.

Realize that you are working at establishing a trusting, cooperative and fun training experience for your animals. Force techniques undermine any trust you have tried to gain and actually prevent cooperative behavior. The two species that you are working with find that it is more entertaining to resist humans and usually have a great time training their handlers.

Begging, luring, or trying to scare them in are not good training techniques. They are having a ball with manipulating you just like they often do with the public! The other pitfall you are facing is a little bit obscured. So, let me ask you a question.

If you are waiting for the apes to comply and then rewarding them for finally complying, what are you rewarding? The answer is that you are rewarding resistance and uncooperative behavior! You can actually be escalating the situation and making it worse.

If you have ever known anyone with barking dogs you can see how this works. The dogs bark and they get scolded; not much happens except that they get some attention. Later, they do it again. This time the owner delays responding. This delay increases the duration of the barking and they get attention after barking for a longer period of time. So the behavior continues to escalate in this manner until the dogs bark incessantly.

Do you see how that works? The same thing is happening with the apes. If they don't cooperate and then get rewarded anyway, you are rewarding longer and longer intervals of non-cooperation.

Consistent schedules of reinforcement.
Many novice trainers that I encounter are still using consistent schedules of reinforcement and wonder why they are making such little process in their training! If your team is still using consistent schedules of reinforcement you need to progress.

If your animals are manipulating your time schedule through their lack of compliance then you might want to go to variable schedules of reinforcement and set up time interval limits.

If they do not comply within the time interval that you have established, give a time-out or end the session and try again later. You may have to alter you daily schedule to make this a possibility but it will be worth the effort!

Lack of understanding and preplanning.
Many groups of trainers do not take the time to meet and plan their strategies. Often, they don't even know what has been going on when they get back from their days off! To make progress you have to be consistent, to be consistent you need to plan, and then you can work as a team.

When you work with multiple animals and multiple trainers it requires that you meet with each other and map out a plan. Regular discussions should include defining how you are going to accomplish a goal, what consequences there will be and what steps you will take. Daily discussions and weekly meetings and training logs can help you to do this.

Are you a reader with a question? Be sure to submit it--and good luck in all your training endeavors!

About the columnist: Since 1978 Diana L. Guerrero has worked professionally with both wild and domestic animals. Guerrero has been affiliated with, and certified by, a variety of animal programs in the USA and Europe. Based in California, she writes, consults, and speaks. Information on her animal career programs, training courses, and her books {What Animals Can Teach Us about Spirituality (SkyLight Paths, 2003), Blessing of the Animals (Sterling, 2007), Help! My Pet is Driving Me Crazy (Guerrero Ink, 2007), Animal Disaster Preparedness for Pet Owners & Pet Professionals (Guerrero Ink, 2007)} can be found in this web site and in the shop. Questions for Guerrero should be submitted via the blog comments or membership forum.