We've been talking about secondary reinforcers and markers, and the good question has come up about the difference between them. On the one hand, we know that a click or a "yes" can be used to communicate to a dog that a specific behavior is what is about to be reinforced. Clicking or saying "yes" at exactly the right moment is incredibly powerful in that it is a precise way of communicating to an animal exactly what it was doing that will elicit the reinforcement (clicks are more precise than words, by the way). However, you could also call a click or "yes" a 2ndary reinforcer, since to be effective it is paired with a primary reinforcer like food, and the animal learns to associate the click/marker with the treat, right? So which is it? Ah, you gotta love the English language: Read More
Using Secondary Reinforcers – Wisdom from Ken Ramirez
I wish the world could have seen Ken's seminar on Sunday in Worcester MA, it was fantastic. For those of you who don't know his name, he is the Training Director and Senior Trainer at the Shedd Acquarim, has trained exotic animals for over 30 years, and could train just about anyone to do anything. I left inspired and crazed to train something, anything, and had to stop myself from trying to teach the flight attendant to scratch her head on cue. When I got home, close to midnight, I sat down with Hope and taught him to flip his hips sideways while lying down to "Settle" before I even walked upstairs. Took five minutes. Scary easy, and extra fun because of being inspired by Ken. However, in order to get home Sunday night, I had to miss the last hour of Ken's videos. I heard they were Read More