La Caja Verde (¡el edificio, no este blog!) premio MATCOAM 2021 en Innovación

Publicado el 8 de agosto de 2021

La Caja Verde es el edificio de la escuela EDUCAN en Madrid, por su diseño multifuncional, sostenible y ecoactivo ha sido premiado con el premio de arquitectura MatCOAM 2021 a la innovación y ha sido seleccionado para el premio FAD de arquitectura 2021.

Timbres y ruidos en el descansillo: ladridos, emociones y sistemática de trabajo.

Publicado el 15 de abril de 2021

Los ladridos ante movimientos cercanos a la puerta de casa y al sonar el timbre son un problema frecuente, además de ofrecer una solución sencilla y eficaz para quienes lo sufren y se desesperan, quiero exponer una visión general sobre cómo planificamos nuestros trabajos de análisis e intervención en el comportamiento en EDUCAN.

Los Grandes Olvidados: un curso ONLINE para las cosas importantes que pasan en casa

Publicado el 6 de noviembre de 2020

Los Grandes Olvidados es un curso para reconocer, afrontar y solucionar los cuatro problemas más importantes de entre los que se manifiestan y deben trabajarse dentro de una casa: depresión, celos, frustración y peleas entre perros que conviven. Estos problemas no suelen incluirse en la formación tradicional de los entrenadores, pero son determinantes en la calidad de vida y la felicidad de los perros y las personas que viven con ellos

Permanencia, espera activa y sus combinaciones

Publicado el 5 de noviembre de 2020

La permanencia y la espera activa, aunque ambas puedan implicar adoptar una posición y mantenerla, son ejercicios conceptualmente diferentes, casi opuestos. El estado interno, las tendencias de acción y los objetivos mentales del perro en uno y otra son radicalmente distintos, lo que requiere de entrenamientos específicos muy diferenciados.

La (pequeña) Residencia CANINA de EDUCAN, solo para vosotr@s

Publicado el 23 de julio de 2020

En agosto abrimos La (pequeña) Residencia CANINA de EDUCAN, solo para los perros de nuestr@s alumn@s y sus clientes.

Lo que CREO sobre la cría de perros de raza, las adopciones, la castración y otros temas relacionados

Publicado el 18 de mayo de 2020

Creo que la cría de perros de raza es una herramienta de ayuda para vaciar las perreras desde fuera. Creo que adoptar un/a perr@ de criadero reduce los abandonos, y digo adoptar, porque adoptar es integrar un sujeto en nuestra familia, sin relación con el origen de dicho sujeto. Y creo que quienes piensan lo contrario lo hacen con la misma buena fe que yo.

El adiestramiento como hecho social y las palabras

Publicado el 2 de mayo de 2020

El adiestramiento es primero y principalmente un hecho social, donde interactuamos de continuo perros y personas, donde hacemos cosas juntos, donde construimos gran parte de lo que será nuestra relación y nuestra forma de entender las relaciones con la otra especie, por eso es necesario complementar los conocimientos de las ciencias del comportamiento con la didáctica, con la pedagogía, con todas las ciencias que hablan desde los individuos y no desde las conductas.

El Efecto MARIPOSA, adiós a la reactividad.

Publicado el 30 de septiembre de 2019

El Efecto MARIPOSA es un programa de entre diez y catorce sesiones tuteadas para que los perros desarrollen, a través de paseos co-dirigidos (el paseo satélite) y juegos coordinados con sus tutores, las capacidades que les permitirán controlar su impulsividad en cualquier ámbito y desde cualquier emoción, logrando mejoras en todos sus problemas de reactividad.

Inicio el trabajo como Director Editorial en Dogalia

Publicado el 25 de marzo de 2019

Desde hace unos meses soy socio de Dogalia y su Director Editorial. Uno de mis objetivos es ayudar a que se publiquen más y mejores libros de nuestr@s entrenador@s, comportamentalistas… de quienes aquí saben de perros (u otros animales) en cualquiera de sus aspectos. Porque tenemos que colectivizar el conocimiento, abrirlo y compartirlo. Escribir es la mejor manera de lograrlo.

El Perro Valiente, primera edición, Argentina 2019. Mejor imposible.

Publicado el 17 de enero de 2019

La primera edición mundial del curso El Perro Valiente, enero 2019 en Argentina, ha sido un éxito total. L@s alumn@s disfrutaron y mayoritariamente consideraron que era la mejor experiencia formativa que habían vivido, la práctica totalidad de l@s perr@s mejoraron sus capacidades de afrontamiento de la ansiedad, y varios de ellos superaron por completo problemas que arrastraban, en algún caso desde hace años. Todo ha ido tan bien que he decidido incluirles en el libro III de Los perros necesitan LIBERTAD. Sus fotografías acompañarán por siempre a este nuevo protocolo. Gracias.

Los perros necesitan LIBERTAD en números (incluyendo cuándo y cuánto)

Publicado el 1 de enero de 2019

Los perros necesitan LIBERTAD ya en preventa, con regalo de camiseta superchula y algunos datos numéricos para que sepas dónde te estás metiendo (¿más largo que El Señor de los Anillos? ¿Really?) 🙂

Los perros necesitan LIBERTAD. Libro III GESTIÓN EMOCIONAL, GESTIÓN DEL ENTORNO OBJETUAL y GESTIÓN DEL ENTORNO SOCIAL de los perros.

Publicado el 20 de diciembre de 2018

El enfoque gestionalista busca que el perro, ante el surgimiento de estímulos o situaciones que provocaban respuestas inadecuadas o insalubres, decida de forma autónoma, voluntaria y proactiva un rumbo de acción adecuado y saludable que le permita solventar eficazmente dicha situación o estímulo. Desde no comerse la basura del cubo cuando no hay nadie en casa, hasta no asustarse de un claxon inesperado, pasando por ser competente en un encuentro frontal con otros perros o personas desconocidas.
El trabajo sobre las capacidades del perro de gestionarse a sí mismo –sus emociones- y a su entorno –físico y social- son una revolución en la forma de entender la educación canina que lleva los resultados a un nivel de eficacia, naturalidad, autonomía y solidez que hasta ahora era imposible alcanzar.

Los perros necesitan LIBERTAD. Libro II Análisis e intervención TETRADIMENSIONAL en el comportamiento canino

Publicado el 19 de diciembre de 2018

El análisis TETRADIMENSIONAL del comportamiento emplea los conocimientos actuales, desde la clásica topografía de la conducta, hasta los objetivos mentales y estados emocionales relacionados con ella, para comprender lo que hace un perro.
La intervención TETRADIMENSIONAL en el comportamiento es el conjunto de protocolos y recursos para cambiar las cosas que un perro elige hacer. Son nuestra base operativa para afrontar exitosamente todos y cada uno de los frentes necesarios del trabajo comportamental con perros.

Los perros necesitan LIBERTAD. Mi(s) nuevo(s) libro(s). Libro I La SALUD COMPORTAMENTAL

Publicado el 17 de diciembre de 2018

Los perros necesitan LIBERTAD, mi(s), nuevo(s) libro(s). El desarrollo del concepto de salud comportamental, y el diseño de medidas objetivas para medirla, mejorarla y tomarla como base de toda intervención en el comportamiento canino es una propuesta integral para cambiar el paradigma que tenemos de educar, adiestrar y convivir con los perros. Y lo cambia a mejor.

Your Dog Thinks And Loves You en EE.UU.

Publicado el 15 de octubre de 2018

El sábado 20 de octubre estaré en Miami presentando: Your Dog Thinks And Loves You, traducción al inglés de Tu perro piensa y te quiere, primer libro de un entrenador español que se traduce y publica en EE.UU. Lo flipo.

El perro Valiente, segunda convocatoria Febrero 2019 completa y un pequeño análisis sobre cómo hacer publicidad de cursos

Publicado el 9 de octubre de 2018

Hemos programado dos cursos en Madrid de «El Perro Valiente (no tiene ansiedad)» un programa innovador para prevenir y tratar la ansiedad ante cualquier circunstancia, las cuarenta y dos plazas de cada uno de ellos se han llenado casi de inmediato. El cómo publicarlos ha sido parte de su éxito.

El Perro Valiente, no tiene ansiedad

Publicado el 2 de octubre de 2018

El Perro Valiente es un programa para construir las capacidades de los perros para afrontar exitosamente las situaciones generadoras de ansiedad, trabajando con su persona de referencia (aunque luego no esté), que aprende a evaluar qué nivel de avance tiene su perro, qué necesita para progresar y cómo puede ayudarle a hacerlo. Esto lo hace más eficaz, rápido y sólido que los afrontamiento clásicos.

David Pinillos y Harlem de las 4 Estaciones ¡¡clasificados para la final de Parcour-Campagne!!

Publicado el 13 de febrero de 2018

Un año después del primer concurso de Campagne en España, David Pinillos y Harlem de las 4 Estaciones logran un éxito sin precedentes al clasificarse para el campeonato de Francia de Campagne.

Nuevas ediciones del BITE WORK PROYECT, más que recomendable.

Publicado el 3 de enero de 2018

El trabajo de mordida es una de las mejores maneras de hacer feliz a un perro, de ayudarle a mejorar su gestión emocional y a trabajar en cooperación con él. El Bite Work Proyect ofrece una introducción a lo mejor de los deportes de mordida, de manera que se garantice el disfrute de perros y personas durante su práctica. Y lo hacen en febrero en Galicia, y en septiembre en Tarragona. Muy recomendable.

Curso Avanzado oct-dic 2017: “That´s life”

Publicado el 20 de diciembre de 2017

Los alumnos de nuestro (mí) Curso Avanzado octubre-diciembre 2017 han exprimido todas sus posibilidades, aceptando la dificultad y la implicación que requiere, cooperando y ayudándose para conocer y exponer sus limitaciones, superarlas y buscar sus máximos. Ha sido una experiencia formativa inigualable quienes hemos sido profesores en este curso, este post es para explicarles agradecerles todo lo que me han dado.

Fases de la comunicación y coordinación social entre perros

Publicado el 29 de noviembre de 2017

La comunicación canina se mueve entre tres tipos de fases: las ostensivas, las normalizadas y las económicas. Y el significado de cada una de ellas en cada momento de una relación y su forma de evolucionar nos aporta mucha información, permitiéndonos evaluar la mejora o empeoramiento de dicha relación. Buena parte de nuestro trabajo de gestión relacional será facilitarles el éxito y transición en cada una de estas fases.

Mi nueva perra, de la camada B de Fontemordant

Publicado el 21 de noviembre de 2017

Mi próxima malinois será una cachorra de la camada B de Fontemordant, cuando expuse los motivos a dos compañeros de EDUCAN ellos también se decidieron por esta camada. Y me dijeron que quizá explicándolos aquí pudiera ayudar a otras personas que se encuentren en similar tesitura.

Los perros pequeños y la educación: Pomeranias en Brobdingnag

Publicado el 16 de noviembre de 2017

A veces se descuida la educación de los perros más pequeños, al ser manejables la opción de cogerles en brazos permite evitar muchos problemas a las personas que viven con ellos ¡¡pero no a ellos, que no aprenderán relacionarse competentemente ni comprenderán cómo gestionar su entorno!! Si tienes que relacionarte con gigantes necesitas un extra de educación, no menos.

Las aulas de gestión relacional: eficacia y seguridad para ayudar a los perros a llevarse bien.

Publicado el 6 de noviembre de 2017

Cuando trabajamos para ayudar a lo perros a relacionarse competentemente entre sí dónde lo hacemos es importante. Una de las mejores maneras de minimizar los riesgos y maximizar los resultados de estos trabajos es disponer de un espacio diseñado para facilitarnos el trabajo, en EDUCAN hemos desarrollado uno específico, que nos ha permitido llegar a otro nivel de resultados y seguridad: las aulas de gestión relacional.

Sergio Perello y Murguia Jim: el druida y el espíritu.

Publicado el 24 de octubre de 2017

Sergio Perello y su perro, Murguia Jim, criado por Óscar Murguia, han quedado subcampeones de Inglaterra y séptimos en categoría Supreme. Ningún español había conseguido algo así, es una noticia que no solo es importante: está llena de maravilla e inspiración para todos los entrenadores de perros.

El filo de la navaja: razas y tendencias comportamentales.

Publicado el 17 de octubre de 2017

Es complicado tratar con seriedad el tema de las mayores o menores tendencias comportamentales de algunas razas. Existe el riesgo de que se iguale dicha raza y a todos sus individuos con comportamientos sospechosos, pero negarlo es irracional, paternalista -porque sabemos que existen y estamos suponiendo que quien lo sepa no será capaz de usar bien la información- y niega a los perros la posibilidad de recibir la mejor educación posible.

EDUCAN Argentina, nuevas delegaciones en Buenos Aires y ¡¡nueva página!!

Publicado el 16 de octubre de 2017

Abrimos dos nuevas delegaciones de EDUCAN en Buenos Aires, EDUCAN CABA Este, a cargo de Emilse Díaz y EDUCAN Pilar, dirigida por Federico Giacomino. Además, como herramienta para nuestra consolidación e implantación en Argentina como empresa de adiestramiento, educación y gestión del comportamiento canino, estrenamos página web y redes sociales.

Bitework Project de Natural Gos: bueno para todos.

Publicado el 14 de septiembre de 2017

El trabajo de mordida es uno de los mejores regalos que podemos ofrecerles a los perros. Bien hecho, les divierte, les ayuda a gestionar sus emociones, a coordinarse con nosotros y construye su felicidad. Bitework Project expone y divulga estos beneficios, librando a los deportes de mordida de prejuicios, ayudando a que progresen y se incorporen de manera natural en la vida de todos los que tienen perros que pueden disfrutarlos.

Otra cosa es con guitarra. EDUCAN en Chile, enero de 2018

Publicado el 16 de julio de 2017

EDUCAN estará en Chile el próximo enero de 2018 con dos cursos, los más populares y demandados que tenemos, y dos especialidades. Para que haya opciones y posibilidades de conocernos para todos quienes quieran hacerlo.

Las críticas feroces, el ahorro y la gestión de la calidad

Publicado el 14 de julio de 2017

Las redes sociales han potenciado las críticas más feroces y dañinas en el mundo del perro, pero aunque dolorosas de leer, se les puede sacar mucho provecho: nadie buscará tan bien los mínimos defectos objetivos como quien desea descalificarte, y las redes sociales se asegurarán de que te llegue su crítica ¡Perfecto! Están trabajando para ti, Aprovéchalo para mejorar cada detalle 😉

Sobre nuestros próximos cursos avanzados

Publicado el 24 de mayo de 2017

Se están llenando las próximas convocatorias de nuestro CURSO AVANZADO. Y no es para menos, una casa entera controlada por cámaras para trabajar sus conductas cuando se quedan solos, unas nuevas pistas para la gestión relacional en la que los perros diseñadas de manera que pueden interactuar entre ellos sin riesgos. ¡Y solo veinticuatro plazas disponibles1

Por qué no me gusta el término «leer a los perros» (II)

Publicado el 17 de abril de 2017

Explicación detallada de los motivos por los que no me gusta la expresión «leer a los perros», segunda parte del post «¿Leer a los perros Not my cup of tea?» que responde a las inteligentes cuestiones que me hicieron varios lectores. Gracias 🙂

¿Leer al perro? Not my cup of tea.

Publicado el 15 de abril de 2017

La comunicación saludable es bidireccional, no solo tenemos que darle señales al perro ¡debemos reconocer y responder a las suyas! Pero que, cuando somos capaces de interpretarles correctamente, hablemos de «leer al perro» es una mala -malísima- forma de expresarlo.

La (falta de) adhesión a las pautas, o porqué los perros nos hacen caso pero las personas no.

Publicado el 28 de febrero de 2017

Es un problema frecuente que los profesionales de la educación canina no logremos que nuestros clientes (humanos) sigan eficaz y consistentemente las pautas de trabajo que prescribimos. En buena medida es culpa nuestra por no diseñar una estrategia adecuada para facilitarlo. Existen unas sencillas pautas a las que debemos adherirnos para conseguir que se adhieran a las nuestras. Parece justo ¿no? 😉

EDUCAN en Zaragoza, el Factor Amigo, la evaluación del ÉXITO.

Publicado el 20 de diciembre de 2016

Factor Amigo, la empresa líder de la educación canina en Zaragoza, se integra en EDUCAN.
A partir de ahora en Zaragoza seremos EDUCAN, el Factor Amigo.

EDUCAN en Valencia: lo bueno es crecer con los buenos.

Publicado el 1 de diciembre de 2016

EDUCAN abre una nueva delegación en Valencia de la mano de dos entrenadores muy especiales: Susana González, la inteligencia discreta, y Jorge Andreu, el hombre bueno de los perros.

El derecho de renuncia

Publicado el 16 de noviembre de 2016

Consideramos que el derecho de renuncia es un derecho fundamental de todo perro que participa en cualquier actividad cuyo objetivo es la mejora o beneficio de otro sujeto y no el suyo propio.
El derecho de renuncia consiste en ofrecerle al perro a la posibilidad de abandonar las interacciones con los otros sujetos o las situaciones de trabajo en (1) cualquier momento que lo desee, (2) cuando le causa perjuicio y/o (3) cuando no le causa beneficios.
El derecho de renuncia es una garantía necesaria para (1) la calidad del trabajo, para (1) la garantía del bienestar y seguridad emocional de los perros que participan en esta actividades y para (3) la práctica deontológica de la intervención profesional en el comportamiento.

Formato completamente nuevo para nuestro CURSO AVANZADO y ¡¡en Sevilla!!

Publicado el 8 de noviembre de 2016

Nuestro Curso Avanzado se renueva por completo con una didáctica cognitiva (para personas) muy divertida, eficaz e interactiva y con nuevos contenidos: protocolos de GESTIÓN RELACIONAL y protocolos de GESTIÓN DEL ENTORNO OBJETUAL. Y… ¡¡en Sevilla!! 🙂

Por primera vez: ¡¡Campagne!!

Publicado el 28 de octubre de 2016

Los días 17 y 18 de diciembre de este 2016 el Club Cinófilo 4 Estaciones, dirigido por Fidel Real, organiza ¡¡la primera prueba de Campagne en territorio nacional!! El Campagne es un reglamento francés muy, muy atractivo por desarrollarse en un entorno natural y no en una pista de trabajo, usando las dificultades propias del terreno, como lagos o ríos, como elementos protagónicos. Yo no me lo voy a perder ¿Y tú?

Los días malos

Publicado el 8 de octubre de 2016

Los entrenadores, los perros y sus propietarios/tutores, podemos tener días malos, lo que afecta al entrenamiento. No siempre es adecuado o posible parar durante esos días, pero continuar trabajando requiere tomar medidas técnicas que aseguren la calidad de las sesiones y su efecto terapéutico sobre el estado emocional.

Entrevista COMPLETA con Kurt Kotrschal, del Wolf Science Center

Publicado el 5 de octubre de 2016

«…Si tratas a tu perro solo como una máquina de estímulo-respuesta, no es justo para el perro, y no obtendrás resultados óptimos…» K.K.
Entrevista de Carlos Alfonso López (EDUCAN) a Kurt Kortschal (Wolf Science Center), en esta entrevista Kurt «se moja» sobre casi todos los temas polémicos: dominancia, castración, perros y lobos… Una entrevista que nos llaman a repensar todo lo que creemos saber sobre perros y lobos. Nunca un científico ha tenido menos miedo a posicionarse.

Garo y Polo son amigos.

Publicado el 26 de septiembre de 2016

Garo y Polo son dos perros machos adultos que no podían convivir, Cecilia y Federico, sus compañeros y tutores, contactaron con los pioneros del C-E en Uruguay: Marcos Rostkier , Cathy López y, sobre todo, Analía Soler, de JUST DOG it. En el artículo está el video, que es lo realmente importante, que refleja más de un año de trabajo, toda la evolución del caso hasta su emocionante final 🙂 🙂

Algunas cuestiones suscitadas por mi marcha del Máster de la UAM. Las piezas del puzzle.

Publicado el 9 de septiembre de 2016

Se ha abierto un saludable debate a raíz de mi abandono del Máster de la UAM, en este post intento aclarar la mayoría de las dudas sobre qué me parece bien y mal al respecto, respondiendo a las cuestiones de varios colegas o interesados en ahondar en este tema.

Por qué dejo el Máster en Intervenciones Asistidas y Etología Aplicada de la UAM

Publicado el 5 de septiembre de 2016

Abandono el Máster en Intervenciones Asistidas y Etología aplicada de la UAM porque creo que, conscientemente o no, promueve un modelo de entrenamiento de animales salvajes que potencia el mascotismo y el uso comercial de animales salvajes (publicidad, cine, espectáculos…). Puesto que este enfoque es incompatible con mi ética animalista creo que debo dejar de colaborar con dicho Máster, sin que se deba entender que descalifico su calidad formativa. La incompatibilidad es únicamente deontológica.

EDUCAN y el trabajo COGNITIVO-EMOCIONAL, la tercera vía.

Publicado el 17 de julio de 2016

En el mercado del entrenamiento canino con frecuencia se promueve la idea de que es necesario elegir entre dos únicos caminos, opuestos e irreconciliables. Pero el surgimiento de la propuesta de trabajo COGNITIVO-EMOCIONAL que hicimos desde EDUCAN a finales de los noventa creó una tercera vía técnica y ética para la educación y la intervención sobre el comportamiento canino.

Lo que dice Susana González y el final de nuestro Curso Avanzado Abril 2016.

Publicado el 28 de junio de 2016

Uno de los momentos más cansados para mí es después de nuestros cursos avanzados, porque es un curso difícil con el que los alumnos adquieren un fuerte compromiso. Y justo ahora leo estas palabras de Susana Gonzáles que, con un timing perfecto, vencen al cansancio consiguiendo restaurar el primer evaluador de un buen trabajo: mi estado emocional vuelve a ser perfecto. Gracias 😀
Gracias Susana González

Pasado y presente: El enfoque de GESTIÓN EMOCIONAL frente al CONDUTISTA/HABITUACIONISTA.

Publicado el 22 de junio de 2016

Actualmente conviven dos enfoques de trabajo a la hora de intervenir en la conductas emocionales de los perros, el CONDUCTISTA/HABITUACIONISTA, que busca habituar a los perros a los estímulos que provocan las conductas emocionales y el GESTIONALISTA, que es el que usamos en EDUCAN, que promueve la mejora de la gestión emocional del perro para que sepa resolver eficazmente las situaciones emocionales.

Buenos Aires ENERO, 2017. El ÉXITO se aprende. Los ÉXITOS se repiten.

Publicado el 15 de junio de 2016

Enero de 2017 lo dedicaremos íntegramente a impartir formación COGNITIVO-EMOCIONAL en nuestra amada Buenos Aires, nuestros cursos para formar profesionales del adiestramiento y de la gestión emocional. También las especialidades de olfato, la más demandada, y una completamente nueva, la de gestión del entorno social y objetual.

La mente tras una reja: Aprendizaje REFERENCIAL vs. aprendizaje CIEGO

Publicado el 9 de junio de 2016

Los refuerzos deben diferenciarse según la capacidad de prospección y control del entorno que aportan al perro, porque afectarán a su manera de ver el mundo, de sentir que lo comprende, más allá de su efecto sobre la conducta.
El aprendizaje REFERENCIAL potencia la capacidad de prospección del perro y le aporta control del entorno 🙁
El aprendizaje CIEGO merma la capacidad de prospección del perro y le vuelve reactivo al entorno 🙂

EDUCAN inicia su implantación en EE.UU. Hello Miami!!

Publicado el 1 de junio de 2016

EDUCAN inicia la implantación de su red de franquicias en los EE.UU., el mayor mercado del mundo en nuestro sector, con la apertura de nuestra delegación en Miami. Porque loos perros piensan y nos quieren, eso es lo básico para estructurar nuestra relación con ellos, y ahora el público estadounidense lo sabe, y lo demanda.

¡¡Di que quieres una revolución!! Laboratorio EDUCAN de medición fisiológica del bienestar canino.

Publicado el 26 de mayo de 2016

EDUCAN acaba de poner en marcha el primer laboratorio de España dedicado exclusivamente a la medición de marcadores fisiológicos (cortisol, oxitocina, serotonina, dopamina…) de la calidad de vida de los perros.
EDUCAN se convierte en la primera y única empresa de adiestramiento y educación canina del mundo que cuenta con instalaciones propias de investigación química para comprobar de manera 100% objetiva la incidencia de las intervenciones sobre su comportamiento en el bienestar de los perros.
Este laboratorio estará a disposición de todos los investigadores y de los profesionales del comportamiento canino. Of course.

Adaptarse o perder, tendencias actuales del mercado profesional canino.

Publicado el 21 de mayo de 2016

El mercado relacionado con educación, cuidado y formación de profesionales del sector de atención a los perros está en un momento de fuerte cambio. Conocer hacia dónde se dirige nos permitirá readaptarnos a las nuevas demandas y competir exitosamente con el resto de operadores, aquí hay algunas claves sobre lo que va a suceder en los próximos años.

La importancia del olfato: me entrevistan en SOBRE PERROS.

Publicado el 14 de mayo de 2016

La semana pasada mi amiga Ana Sánchez Rabanal me entrevistó sobre la importancia del olfato para los perros en su programa SOBRE PERROS, que dirige junto a Salvi Melguizo.

Estímulos, contextos y situaciones en las intervenciones comportamentales.

Publicado el 3 de mayo de 2016

Los perros no aprenden limitándose a asociar estímulos y conductas, sino que buscan activamente un marco mayor donde encuadrar estas asociaciones de manera que les ayuden a entender el mundo de manera más global. Este marco pueden ser los contextos o las situaciones adaptativas, si no incorporamos el trabajo contextual y situacional a nuestra manera de entrenar tendremos resultados parciales o, lo que es peor, no tendremos resultados.

De perros, lobos y humanos con Kurts Kotrschal en Madrid, en EDUCAN

Publicado el 23 de abril de 2016

Kurt Kotrschal, uno de los tres científicos que estudian las capacidades cognitivas, sociales, comunicativas y afectivas de los lobos y de los perros ¡y cómo las aplican al relacionarse con personas! Impartirá los días 7 y 8 de Mayo, en EDUCAN, un seminario organizado por Factor Amigo y Luis Souto.

¿EDUCAN lo que tiene es mucho marketing?

Publicado el 12 de abril de 2016

Todos entendemos intuitivamente que debe existir un balance al llevar a cabo un servicio profesional de educación canina (o de adiestramiento de perros 😉 ) entre la exigencia técnica y el marketing que nos ayude a comercializarlo pero ¿Cuánto marketing es el bueno?

Trabajos grupales: cambiando el chip

Publicado el 6 de abril de 2016

Las clases grupales con perros no pueden abordarse como una clase individual colectiva. Debemos diseñar el trabajo tomando en cuenta el tipo de perros al que se dirigen y los objetivos que podemos lograr en el tiempo que dedicaremos a la actividad. Con eso podremos elegir técnicas y recursos y decirle al dueño del perro con claridad qué logrará al apuntarse y cómo lo logrará.

Truman piensa y nos quiere. Cómo empezar bien el día :-)

Publicado el 18 de marzo de 2016

Tu perro piensa y te quiere, mi libro, fue uno de los «actores» secundarios de la película Truman. Ahora su director, Cesc Gay, y sus dos protagonistas humanos, Ricardo Darín y Javier Cámara, han tenido el bonito detalle de firmar en un ejemplar 🙂

Tripi

Publicado el 3 de marzo de 2016

Tripi, el mejor amigo de Noelia y también amigo mío acaba de morir. Era un labrador de dieciséis años que ha sido feliz, que nos ha hecho felices y cuya vida ha estado plena de sentido.

Riesgos emocionales de los trabajos de olfato mal planteados.

Publicado el 21 de febrero de 2016

Para que el trabajo de olfato sea una herramienta de salud emocional y promueva la felicidad de los perros debemos mantener la motivación intrínseca que supone estar buscando, evitando que el perro se obsesione únicamente por encontrar, lo que puede dar lugar a trabajos eficaces, pero insalubres para el perro e incompatibles con su bienestar. No todos los trabajos de olfato son buenos para los perros.

¡¡Bu!!

Publicado el 10 de febrero de 2016

Muchos educadores caninos muestran miedo ante la idea de que surjan nuevos conocimientos que generen nuevos protocolos y técnicas de entrenamiento, aferrándose a lo que hoy funciona como si fuera algo cerrado e inamovible. Pero debemos asumir que estamos en el neolítico del entrenamiento, hemos hecho mucho, pero queda muchísimo más por hacer. La tecnología del comportamiento canino está en su infancia, no en su madurez.

Pero si es solamente un PERRO…

Publicado el 18 de enero de 2016

El psicólogo y entrenador canino (Asociado a EDUCAN en Buenos Aires) Hugo Daniel Victorero acaba de sacar un libro: Pero si es solamente un PERRO… precisamente para demostrar que nuestros amigos caninos son muuuucho más 🙂 🙂

«¡¡Cómo moláis cabrones!!» EDUCAN Awards 2015

Publicado el 20 de diciembre de 2015

Para dar a conocer y recomendar las acciones publicitarias de calidad excelente que realizan otras empresas del sector he creado los «¡¡Cómo moláis cabrones!! EDUCAN Awards», que reconocen la calidad de estos trabajos y la envidia absoluta que nos da que no sean nuestros. En esta primera edición de 2015 hemos tenido tres categorías: PÁGINA WEB, CARTELERÍA y AUDIOVISUAL 🙂 🙂

Hogar, dulce hogar. Una propuesta de SLOW TRAINING.

Publicado el 11 de diciembre de 2015

Solicitarle al perro dentro de casa, cuando está tranquilo y estable emocionalmente, conductas conocidas de manera relajada mejorará las activaciones emocionales asociadas a esas conductas, el valor social y afectivo del entrenamiento y redundará en beneficios tanto para la consistencia de dichas conductas como de la salud emocional y el bienestar del perro.

Rainfer y el frío.

Publicado el 4 de diciembre de 2015

El centro de rescate y recuperación de primates Rainfer necesita ayuda para proveer de calefacción a los primates alojados allí, sin eso muchos podrían morir este invierno. Es una necesidad moral conseguir los fondos necesarios para ello.

La responsabilidad de tutelar la ilusión.

Publicado el 23 de noviembre de 2015

Quienes contratan a un entrenador o se forman como entrenadores llegan llenos de ilusión, es una responsabilidad profesional real no romper esa ilusión, sino usarla como herramienta de progreso para el aprendizaje y el disfrute de los conocimientos que se van adquiriendo.

El día después: ResaKaminski. Ciencia con emoción.

Publicado el 16 de noviembre de 2015

El seminario Ciencia de la Comunicación Canina de Juliane Kaminski ha tenido un éxito desbordante, de público y de acogida. Nos expuso nuevos conocimientos que hacen que tengamos que repensar cómo relacionarnos y entrenar con los perros.

Ciencia de la COMUNICACIÓN CANINA, Juliane Kaminski. 14 y 15 de noviembre 2015.

Publicado el 4 de noviembre de 2015

Los perros tienen sorprendentes capacidades para comunicarse con nosotros y entre ellos, pero las ideas que se manejan en el ámbito de la educación canina profesional no suelen estar basadas en los conocimientos científicos. En este seminario Juliane Kaminski, una de las científicas más relevantes del mundo en el área, nos explicará TODO (:-o) lo que ahora sabemos sobre COMUNICACIÓN CANINA.

¡¡Más Darín y menos Carlos Alfonso!! Vente al cine con nosotros GRATIS TOTAL

Publicado el 16 de octubre de 2015

El seminario que iba a impartir estaba programado para la fecha de las elecciones generales 2015 al Gobierno de España, por el momento duro y complejo que estamos pasando he creído lo más adecuado anularlo. En compensación EDUCAN ha alquilado una sala de cine en Kinépolis, para ver Truman, de Cesc Gay, en la que sale mi libro TPPYTQ, el día de su estreno el 30 de Octubre. Os invitamos a venir, totalmente gratis, y así ayudarnos a llenarla de Cognitivos-Emocionales.

¿Saltar? Sólo sigamos jugando.

Publicado el 6 de octubre de 2015

Enseñar el salto vertical a perros sensibles puede ser un problema, en este post propongo una técnica que les lleva a elegir saltar de manera voluntaria y emocionalmente segura a través de determinar sus objetivos mentales ¡¡Pero antes de usarlo deben cumplirse varios prerrequisitos!!

Patricia MacConnell: rompiendo la campana de cristal.

Publicado el 21 de septiembre de 2015

Patricia MacConnell en su visita a Madrid afirmó la necesidad de que los adiestradores no tomen actitudes sectarias para que nuestra disciplina pueda avanzar en resultados y conocimiento colectivo.

Cándido Martín Manuel Mariano, alcalde de Pedroso de Acim. Los buenos hacen cosas buenas.

Publicado el 16 de septiembre de 2015

Cándido Manual Martín Mariano, alcalde de Pedroso de Acím, conmovido por el sufrimiento de Rompesuelas y de los anteriores Toros de la Vega ha decidido desterrar las fiestas taurinas de su localidad. El debate inteligente que much@s animalistas hemos tenido en la red ha contribuido a convencerle. Esto sí que mola contarlo.

Emoción y cognición en el animalismo. Un enfoque práctico.

Publicado el

Los objetivos profundos del animalismo son el reconocimiento de derechos para los animales no humanos y su cumplimiento, pero los objetivos inmediatos son evitar el sufrimiento y abuso de cualquier animal. Creo que al criticar a quienes realizan acciones de ayuda únicamente hacia animales puntuales o especies determinadas por ser de un animalismo insuficiente se restan apoyos a animales concretos que lo necesitan y se hace retroceder la causa y la sensibilidad animalista.

Patricia McConnell viene a Madrid (y si no puedes venir, lo puedes ver en Internet)

Publicado el 4 de agosto de 2015

Patricia MacConnell viene a Madrid los días 19 y 20 de septiembre, el 19 presentará en castellano su libro «El amor no tiene edad», sobre las pautas para incorporar un perro adulto adoptado a un hogar, el 20 ofrecerá un coloquio sobre perros y entrenamiento. Dogalia ofrece la posibilidad de asistir a ambos eventos presencialmente o por streaming, desde cualquier lugar del mundo. Con la colaboración de EDUCAN 😉

EDUCAN Internacional: Lima, Perú, 2015.

Publicado el 28 de julio de 2015

Reseña de mi visita a Lima en Julio de 2015 con EDUCAN Internacional, invitado por All Q Perú para exponer los protocolos de adiestramiento Cognitivo-Emocional y de Gestión Emocional. Un país inolvidable y un grupo de alumnos fabulosos.

Dogalia: Cómo nos aman los perros

Publicado el 13 de julio de 2015

Dogalia acaba de publicar el libro «Cómo nos aman los perros», de Gregory Berns, el primer neurocientífico que ha estudiado a travçes de la Resonancia Magnética cómo funciona el cerebro de un perro, con particular interés en cómo funciona cuando interactúan con nosotros, su conclusión en que: Los perros piensan y nos quieren 😉

Click or Think? La tirita antes que la herida.

Publicado el 26 de junio de 2015

Varias declaraciones de investigadores de primer nivel en cognición canina se enfocan en los severos riesgos y limitaciones del Clicker Training, considerándolo incompatible y nocivo para las capacidades cognitivas, emocionales y sociales del perro. Esto ha creado un enfrentamiento en algunos países entre «cognitivos» y «clickeros». Pero conociendo dichos riesgos podemos adecuar nuestro trabajo para seguir usando el clicker de manera útil y constructiva. Debemos evitar frentismos y promover el debate para que el entrenamiento y educación canina sean una empresa colaborativa y comunal.

Banco de pruebas: el material de adiestramiento Good Can, (I) Apports.

Publicado el 15 de junio de 2015

Banco de pruebas: probamos los apports de la manufactura valenciana de material de adiestramiento Good Can. Calidad, funcionalidad, estética y cuidado en el detalle.

Entrenamiento de animales y ética: una perspectiva animalista (II)

Publicado el 1 de junio de 2015

Para diseñar una deontología eficaz de las intervenciones sobre el comportamiento de los animales no humanos es necesario definir de manera objetiva el concepto de maltrato y quiénes están en disposición de cometerlo. En este post se propone una definición que facilita prevenirlo, evaluar su aparición y saber quién puede ser responsable de causarlo.

Entrenamiento de animales y ética: una perspectiva animalista (I)

Publicado el 26 de mayo de 2015

Estoy haciendo un trabajo amplio sobre ética y entrenamiento de animales no humanos. Varios amigos me han convencido de ir publicando en La Caja Verde extractos, para recibir feedback de quienes la leéis y así convertir este trabajo en algo más colectivo y compartido. Esta es la primera entrega.

Buenos Aires, Enero 2016. Revolución en las aulas.

Publicado el 20 de mayo de 2015

El año pasado visitamos Buenos Aires para impartir los cursos de EDUCAN con su nuevo formato y los nuevos protocolos relacionados con los conocimientos que se recogen en el libro “Tu perro piensa y te quiere”.

Hemos programado nuevas actividades para Enero 2016 en Buenos Aires: cursos y seminarios que dan acceso al sistema de capacitaciones para Educadores Caninos Cognitivo-Emocionales oficial de EDUCAN.

¿Qué es «adiestramiento en positivo»?

Publicado el 15 de mayo de 2015

No he podido encontrar una definición objetiva sobre las premisas técnicas que debe cumplir un adiestramiento para ser denominado «adiestramiento en positivo», de tal manera que no se podría evaluar de manera objetiva cuándo una adiestramiento es o no es «adiestramiento en positivo». Le pido a los lectores que me remitan las definiciones objetivas que conozcan de «adiestramiento en positivo».

¿Apport? Be water my friend…

Publicado el 17 de abril de 2015

Las botellas de plástico con agua son un recurso excelente para que el perro aprenda a sujetar, estabilizar y mantener en la boca un objeto de trabajo. Usarlas es una excelente manera de preparar al perro para que después sostenga firmemente y entregue con claridad el apport de competición.

Teóricamente hablando…

Publicado el 8 de abril de 2015

En el mundo del entrenamiento y la gestión del comportamiento canino a veces se le resta importancia a la formación teórica, pero sin que sea consistente podemos caer en interpretaciones falsas de los conocimientos sobre el comportamiento, no podemos diseñar trabajos innovadores ni ejercer nuestra profesión de manera eficaz y ética.

EDUCAN and Dognition, towards a new technology of behavior. Cognitive technology, of course!

Publicado el 19 de marzo de 2015

As dog trainers we are behavior technologists. Hence, we need to have a technology that translates the raw knowledge acquired by basic scientists into tools which are applicable to the education of our canine learners on a daily basis.

However, the technology available in the dog world was developed within a dated framework which is now under strain and needs to be overcome. Despite being effective it precludes us from exploiting the new discoveries and from offering services of a higher quality.

The science of behavior has changed its focus in recent years. It used to be limited to observable conducts whereas now it pays prominent attention to the study of the cognitive processes underlying such behaviors.

A further change concerns the fact that behavior analysis used to focus on general learning processes, those which are common to a majority of animal species. In contrast it has now started paying attention to the learning capacities peculiar to each species and even to each individual within a given species.

Finally, since dogs had not awaken the interest of researchers focusing on behavior, their way of acting used to be inferred on the basis of comparisons with other species, either rats and pigeons studied in laboratories or wolves observed in a natural environment. Nevertheless, in recent years dogs have been exhaustively studied with regard to their cognitive skills, both individual and social, as well as in relation to their communicative abilities and their way of interacting with humans.

At the end of the 1990’s EDUCAN started to develop a new technology of behavior designing protocols and intervention guidelines that took advantage of this wealth of new scientific knowledge available. Since then we have being making a sustained effort and, of course, my new book , “Your Dog Thinks and Loves You” further progresses in the same direction.

At that time those scientists working in the field were changing the way we understood dogs but did not show too much interest regarding the practical application of their discoveries. Today this has changed too and Dognition is the stepping stone in this line of research.

Dognition is a website cofounded by Brian Hare who is the author of “The Genius of Dogs” and the Director of the Duke Canine Cognition Center. Within its panel of experts Dognition counts with some of the leading researchers on canine cognition. Its objective is to offer owners custom results about their dog’s cognition. This is done by proposing games that owners can play with their dogs in the comfort of their own homes.

Dognition is thus developing technology for cognitive assessment, an effort that dovetails nicely with EDUCAN’s mission: the development of technology that allows the provision of cognitive training and education.

To better understand the importance of Dognition’s technological contributions, consider the example below. My colleague Javier Moral, Dean of Studies at EDUCAN, and I teach our training courses. However, our way to prepare the materials for the class differs widely. Javier’s intelligence, on the one hand, is very visual and so there are plenty of colors, arrows, overall views and other graphic representations in his notes. On the other hand, mine are totally different because I focus on words to learn. Thus, I summarize, create overviews and phrase the contents that I have to explain to students in alternative ways. Doubtless, if one of us had to prepare for the class with the notes of the other, it would be an ordeal and our performance would certainly be inferior. However, neither of us is more intelligent than the other. Simply put, our cognitive skills are different and, here is the bottom line, the working methodology needs to be in consonance with such peculiarities to make the utmost of the cognitive capacities of each one of us.

Likewise, we are aware that our children do not learn in the same manner. Hence in order to help them develop their full potential we identify activities where they excel and wisely combine them with others that contribute to develop weaker areas. We should do the same with our dogs.

However, the currently available training technology only offers (offered ) resources that serve to exploit general cognitive skills, those which are common to many species. Such strategy may provide quality tools when we want to teach circus skills or merely mechanical and repetitive routines. However, such tools are barely sufficient to provide an integral education for our dogs and at any rate they are suboptimal. This is particularly evident with regard to individuals belonging to breeds that diverge from the average standard on one side or the other. Good trainers are capable of deviating from the general rules to adjust to the needs of each individual learner. However, when they engage in this process trainers lack any technical criterion or, for that matter, any objective tools for the assessment of progress. In sum, they are solely relying on their talent which is clearly unsatisfactory.

This is the reason why Dognition and EDUCAN have come together in a project that fills both parties with hope. Its aim is to develop a new behavior technology that, in the first place, evaluates objectively and clearly how each dog learns, and then, to propose protocols and technical tools that suit each custom assessment.

And, since I know my followers well and I feel that you are about to ask it, I will tell you before you do. Yes, we are working on the translation of our websites and the rest of the information to the other party’s language.

This will not only lead to a new understanding of how to train dogs but it will also change our mind frame with regard to how we live together with dogs. Through training we will be able to help dogs blossom, live full and integrated lives, thus ultimately becoming happier.

A new and brighter era is dawning in the training and education of dogs world.

About wolves and dogs

Publicado el

In the world of training there are some questions that reemerge from time to time giving rise to enthusiastic opinions on both sides. One of these topics is the reliance on comparisons between dogs and wild wolves.

The controversy is currently on fire in Biology and I intend to explain its state of affairs in the present article so that readers are able to ground their personal opinions on a more scientific basis. I will attempt to be brief, though I have to recognize that I am seldom successful in that regard.

Not so long ago wolves and dogs were deemed to be two different species from the taxonomic stand. Taxonomy groups animals into families, genus, species and so on depending on how close to one another they are thought to be. In order to assess this evolutionary proximity, morphological/anatomic similarities and differences (i.e., form and structure) were typically taken into consideration. Such classification method required some guess work and heavily depended on the analysts’ sagacity to interpret the observations made. By using these yardsticks, dogs (canis familiaris) were separated from wolves (canis lupus).

The classification methodology just described has changed due to developments in the study of the genome. DNA studies have caused reconsideration of many different species and substantial reorganization of their taxonomy. Conclusive data support the conclusion that dogs belong to the lupus species. Hence the most relevant organization in the world dealing with taxonomy (i.e., Integrated Taxonomic Information System –ITIS- and Mammals Species of the World) currently classify dogs as canis lupus familiaris, a subspecies of wolves.

Does this mean that dogs are tantamount to wolves and that we can draw a strict parallelism between them? The answer is no.

Ethology has proven that ecology determines behavior. Thus, for instance, Iberian wolves (canis lupus signatus) live in small packs composed of an adult couple and one or two offsprings. There are seven individuals at most in these packs, what leads to simple and relatively primitive social interactions compared to, for instance, arctic wolves (canis lupus arctos) whose packs can reach thirty individuals. The size of the pack determines crucial aspects like home range and prey size.

Ecology has an important influence on hunting techniques. Iberian wolves practice stalking and hunting raids, depending on the type of prey they are after, whereas other lupus subspecies do not make use of such techniques.

Let me quote from Signatus.org:

“Usually when they attack flocks of domestic animals wolves stalk in a coordinated manner. When confronted with the obstacle of shepherd dogs, one of the wolves will let himself or herself be seen in order to lure the dogs’ attention. When the prey consists of rabbits, one or several wolves will beat the area while the rest observe, usually close to the access of the hutch where the rabbits will flee when they are pursued.»

Also available at: faunaiberica.org and animalesenextincion.es

In sum, the behavior of wolves is far from uniform. Furthermore, in relation to dogs we ought to take account of the domestication process. After the experiments carried out by Belíayev, we know domestication has changed dogs’ way of learning as well as their relationship with the environment.

Belíayev worked with silver foxes, a species used in the fur industry. By selecting for tameness the Russians wanted to obtain specimens who would be easier to manipulate, in order to cut costs down. After a few generations they obtained foxes who could be easily manipulated and who were friendly with humans. It was also found that tamed animals had improved skills for learning through operant conditioning, higher social plasticity, lower instinctive rigidity and a decreased cognitive confrontation of problems (Beliáyev 1969, 1979, 1981, 1982). On a different note, the story had a happy end for the wolves since due to a change in the color and patterns of the fur they were considered useless for the industry.

These differences regarding tameness and living environments lead all scientists to agree that dogs and wolves are two different etho-species. In simpler words, they differ in their behavior. In fact, due to the existence of such outstanding behavioral differences more and more ethologists are arguing in favor of a different way of classifying species on the basis of whether they have followed a different course of evolution, as it is the case with wolves and dogs, as well as with Right whales in the North Atlantic and the Pacific regions.

Taking these criteria into consideration the ICZN and the ITIS currently admit the term canis familiaris as a valid synonim of canis lupus familiaris for the purpose of scientific works, articles and communications.

Summing up, today we know that dogs are a subspecies of the wolf, given their genetic proximity, but that they are a different etho-species because of their ecology (constantly lying on a sofa in our living room while our children cuddle them) and the process of domestication has had a dramatic impact on their conduct, setting their own course of evolution, one that differs from any of the other members of the lupus genus. Therefore, it is correct to make comparisons between dogs and wolves to obtain data, but a strict parallelism is not possible since it would neglect prominent differences.

As it is usually the case, it’s neither black nor white.

Benefits of stress (II)

Publicado el

WARNING: This is an extremely long article, one of those my webmaster bitterly complains about!

In a previous article I analyzed the general benefits of working with stress. As Fernando Silva commented then, if we are unable to teach our own dogs to work with little doses of stress and to manage them correctly, our hands will be tied for training other people’s dogs in commercial works, behavior modifications or, for that matter, to train high quality conducts for dog sports.

Bottom line: If we cannot handle the low level of stress caused by confining our dogs in the car for a couple of hours, as Mr. Silva explains, or the stress arising from a trip to a new location, as it happens to those who take part in sport competitions of any kind, or the stress deriving from the implementation of any of the available handling / safety protocols designed for the treatment of fearful dogs or some types of aggressive dogs, or even the stress caused by the learning of a difficult behavior, we will be unable to train most of the times. Thus we will have to renounce to work precisely with those dogs who would benefit the most through an improved quality of life in the medium term.

In sum, it is imperative to teach dogs to manage stress. As a matter of fact this learning produces two main benefits:

  • Dogs will progressively become less stressed out when confronted with the same stimuli or with environments that formerly resulted in high levels of stress.
  • Dogs will no longer appear to be insecure, unstable or nervous when something affects them. Their attitude will change progressively as they become capable of confronting problems in a confident manner.

The first point mentioned above contributes to improving the excessively emotional reactions so characteristic of sensitive dogs (e.g., Border collies or Malinois) when they are challenged with changes in the scenario. Very often these dogs exhibit worry, excessive surprise and even fear in the face of certain changes to the environment. I have witnessed how dogs impeccably trained with fully respectful methods reacted with fear in such circumstances. Facts that novel trainers misinterpreted as meaning that the dog had been mistreated and harshly trained. This was not the case. Simply put, these dogs can be compared to brilliant scientists who are unable to present their work publicly because the crowded atmosphere inhibits their communication skills and make them appear as intellectually clumsy. Thus we need to train their stress management abilities. In order to get there the most common mistake we should avoid is overprotection. As a matter of fact, trainers tend to avoid presenting stressful situations instead of teaching dogs the tools to sort out such situations.

The second point referred to above is even more important because it determines whether dogs will learn to enjoy themselves when confronted with levels of stress sensibly graduated. This effect can be compared to the case of persons growing in the face of adversity. We all agree that there are few feelings that beat the satisfaction stemming from successfully overcoming a difficult task that we perceived as a problem (e.g., the training of a particularly complex exercise, taking part in a tough competition and so on). This implies a dramatically important change in frame of mind for our dogs, from considering a situation as a source of worry to seeing it as a chance to have fun applying the skills they master. The shift depends on the acquisition of mastery in stress management. I think most of the great trainers I have come across do not emphasize their successes as much as how their dogs kept working and growing in the face of adversity, for there are few things as moving as taking part in a competition and, in the most difficult situation, noticing how your dog increases in implication and tenacity.

As a matter of fact, the benefits deriving from good stress management are so important that some researchers have devised ways to replicate stressful experiences while taking the associated risks away, so as to improve performance and learning punctually. These stress “simulators” are based on three main yardsticks:

  • Arousal levels: Stress always implies an increase in the degree of physical activation. Thus if we manage to increase the level of arousal over the regular thresholds we will be able to rip improvements in attention, reaction times as well as in the skills to discriminate relevant information. The best part is that this can be achieved without any of the risks associated with actual stressful events. It suffices to start by exercising dogs a bit to speed their physiology up. This simple intervention substantially improves performance, self-satisfaction and welfare.
  • Novelties in the environment: The introduction of anything new under the sky triggers a minimum amount of adaptive stress. By presenting novelties to dogs in an intentional and calculated manner we can improve their capacity to adapt, their attention skills, their sustained concentration and all of the benefits already commented in the first part of this article. And without risks. Thus researchers found that automatic improvements in the ability to analyze problems, better results and a decrease of distractions followed by simply changing the workplace of various workers.
  • A break from routine: Routines calm and eliminate stress. When researchers changed the routines of several workers, thereby increasing their stress levels, a very interesting effect emerged. At the beginning all workers claimed that the change would be detrimental to their work and their performance, as it was bothering to change their customary way of doing things. However, after a period working out of the routine, the results achieved in terms of performance, time and quality of the work showed improvements. Even more surprising, the workers’ feelings of satisfaction had also increased. This can be a temporary effect aimed at eliminating the possibility of suffering residual stress. After a change of routine the return to the normal situation prevents the stress from building up residually and having negative effects.

By using these three principles we will set good foundations for stress management, something that will allow us to reap the benefits without incurring the losses of stress.

But watch out! These three simulators are so effective –remember the close link between stress and amusement- that those who rely on them on a frequent basis can become addicted (do not forget that stress leads to the production of endorphins) and may lose the motivation to work without stress. This explains cases of workaholism, persons who need a permanently high level of arousal, novelties and new challenges to feel good. They are on drugs!

It also explains why so many Agility dogs seem to show extremely high levels of stress during the events. Recently a friend of mine who competes in Agility commented the case of her Border collie with me. She did not understand why the stress levels were so high in the field. He was a couch potato at home and walked and played in the countryside several days per week, as a normal dog. The social structure at home was also normal, he got along well with the other dogs, and my friend had always trained and treated him with respect. The reason for this behavior is that Agility is an unintentional but brutal stress simulator: high level of physical activation, environmental changes (competitors often go to different fields in a matter of weeks) and changes in routines (each field differs from the rest). This is why Agility tends to generate addiction. In these cases the solution is not to prevent the dog from activating, something that cannot realistically be achieved, but to teach the dog to manage the stress from the beginning so that it does not start building up in the course of different competitions and training sessions. That kind of stress is similar to that exhibited by people who lose their heads for a hobby, as it is more closely related to excitement in anticipation of the amusing experience than to any negative experience!

How to manage stress in these peculiar exciting environments will be the topic of the last part of this trilogy. I hope you are enjoying this saga about the benefits of stress for dog training and their general quality of life, always provided it is adequately managed.

 

The benefits of stress

Publicado el

Last year a modest soccer team, Alcorcón, gave Real Madrid a proper ticking-off. Alcorcón won 4-0 and a new idiom was coined in Spanish language to celebrate the event: “el Alcorconazo”. Analysts agreed that one of the main reasons for this unusual defeat was that Real Madrid was too relaxed, whereas their rivals did their best. In fact, people blamed Real Madrid players for not being sufficiently stressed, unlike their rivals, and ready to confront the competition.

It is typical that whenever we speak about stress in relation to dog training, or more generally in relation to dogs, we emphasize its negative consequences. However, we regularly forget to mention the numerous benefits stemming from this adaption mechanism. Due to this biased view stress is becoming one of those “evils”, full of harmful consequences, something necessary to avoid at any price.

However, research has shown the many benefits of stress when it is correctly managed. In fact, if stress was not beneficial it would not have developed as an adaptive mechanism in the first place. It exists because it works and it helps in the assessment of many different situations and in dealing with them.

Nowadays we know that stress is not only convenient but essential in order to succeed in sports and to achieve artistic creation, that it enhances enjoyment and eliminates the dependency from external reinforcers, and that it is an indispensable element for personal growth in each of us.

We should take into account that stress is an individual and internal process. Its causality can be modified, thus there is no fix relationship between cause and effect: what stresses some dogs, may leave others unaffected. To put it in more simple words: Stress is not something that happens TO the dog, but something that happens IN the dog. It is important to bear this consideration in mind while training and not to consider those factors generating stress as if they were fixed. Stressors are dynamic and that is why one of the worst strategies to deal with them is to systematically avoid all stressful situations. This way the dog will progressively become more and more sensitive, and hence the stress response will progressively be triggered by stimuli of a lesser magnitude.

But then, how should dog guardians deal with stress? Given that it is an internal process which can be modified, the most useful and effective strategy consists of teaching dogs to manage it so that they will not trigger the stress response in relation to stimuli which do not represent an actual danger. This progress has a great potential for alleviating the situation of dogs with phobias and those who are particularly sensitive.

Once the dog has learnt how to manage the stress, we will not just be able to avoid its detrimental effects, but also to exploit its many benefits.

Stress has several benefits for dog training provided it is correctly managed:

  • Strong implication and compromise with the work. The dog enjoys the activities to the maximum.
  • Self-reinforcement, due to the correct activation of stress mechanisms the dog experiences the activity as reinforcing in itself, what makes the use of external reinforcers superfluous.
  • The dog has more fun because enjoyment is directly linked with stress. Most of the activities that we find enjoyable give rise to stress too (eustress), and this relationship holds also in the opposite sense: we enjoy those stimuli that trigger eustress in us.
  • Reduced latency (i.e., increased speed), the responses offered under stress are faster and more assertive.
  • Attention training, stress contributes to focusing all the attention on important issues. As a consequence there will be automatic improvements in relation to:
    • Concentration.
    • Skills to ignore trivial stimuli unimportant for the task.
  • Improvements in resilience, defined as the capacity to resist stressful situations without suffering negative effects and to overcome such situations positively. In other words, it seems that it is necessary to train with stress in order to avoid its negative effects.
  • Dogs develop the feeling of controlling the situation at issue, and hence the negative elements that they may encounter are managed proactively and perceived as something that they can overcome. As a result they become more self-confident.

However, in order to exploit these benefits without falling into the negative side, it is crucial to be very strict in fulfilling the following requirements:

  • Provide a clear and quick response to the stressful event, the solution to the situation should be immediate and easy to reach for the dogs, either because they know it perfectly or because they can easily deduct it.
  • Provide only short activation periods. If we extend the working session for too long two results are likely, either the beneficial effects will disappear or the dog will become “addicted” to working under stress and we will not be able to do without it to maintain the quality of the training. In both cases we will face the problems we already know stress causes.
  • Provide enough time and leisure activities for the dog to recover. Stress is designed to provide its benefits when it is activated for brief periods of time and occasionally. Therefore, it is very important to allow the dog go back to normal after the activation period. One simple way to do this is to let dogs practice their favorite activities (e.g., running in the countryside off-leash).
  • Ensure the good physical condition of the dog so that the additional arousal does not give rise to tensions or muscular problems that prevent the dog from enjoying it. Stress is physically exhausting. Therefore, no benefit will be achieved if the dog is sick or in poor physical condition.
  • Activate your dog only occasionally, not in every single training session. It is quite easy to be tempted to forget this recommendation after witnessing the many and important benefits deriving from stress, both for the training and for the general quality of life. A skilful trainer may obtain high performance from dogs at the price of making them addicted to stress. However, any benefits for the quality of life of the dog will completely vanish and the stress will show its detrimental side.
  • Autonomy, the results of combining stress with a strict training style where even the smallest mistakes are immediately corrected are devastating. For the dog to feel control over the situation and the stress to have benefits it is of paramount importance that the responses are perceived with a certain degree of leeway, not as something exact and that cannot be changed.

The benefits of stress are becoming so popular that some interesting models for simulating stress are being proposed. This would allow us to reach the benefits without taking the associated risks. I had included the explanation of these models (as well as its tentative application to dogs) in the original draft of this article but my webmaster reckons that my articles should not be longer than two pages and you have already read three. Hence, I will publish this as a second part in a few weeks. Hope you enjoy it!

I promise you that I will write about our work at the Zoo soon. However, I owed this article about stress to Eliseo Rodríguez

Negative punishment, a further step forward

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Negative punishment is one of the most widespread and advertised conditioning processes. It consists of the removal of a positive stimulus contingent with the emergence of a conduct that we wish to eliminate.

It is important to clarify from the outstart that negative punishment is not a sort of panacea to get rid off every kind of conduct. It is only useful with regard to operant behaviors, that is, those behaviors which have no self-reinforcement processes attached so that their emergence depends on the association with other reinforcers. Thus nobody should harbor hopes of getting rid off a behavior like digging in the garden by letting the dog doing it at will!

Doubtless it is very important to know the scope of application of a process. However, it is equally important to know the cases where that process is not effective. Few things have been as deleterious to the public image of negative punishment as its indiscriminate prescription also to sort out emotional problems and problems associated with self-reinforcing behaviors. Anyhow, the reputation of this process among professionals is excellent. The reason is that it enables us to consistently eliminate many conducts without generating conflicts or resort to aversive stimulation.

There are several ways of applying negative punishment but the most popular one consists of the suppression of the positive stimulus acting as a reinforcer for the targeted conduct. As a rule of thumb we advise clients not to reinforce dogs when they offer the unwanted behavior. In fact this is a mixture of negative punishment and extinction that will only yield slow results. We can speed up the behavior change if we organize things in such a way that dogs are being positively stimulated before engaging in the problematic conduct so that the pleasant stimulation can cease as soon as the problematic conduct begins.

For instance, suppose that we want to prevent the dog from jumping on persons to greet them. A simple way of doing this is to caress and pamper your dog while sitting on the floor. As soon as the dog jumps on you, you will end up the session by standing up. This intervention requires more preparation but it produces faster and more consistent results than following the typical advice of “ignoring dogs when they jump on you and pampering them when they stay with all four paws on the floor”. The reason is that with the latter advice dogs learn that they should jump once in a while to trigger the owner’s sequence of behaviors. It happens very often with regular owners, not with seasoned professionals hopefully, and this slows down and even blocks any progress. By organizing things in such a way that the positive stimulus is always present before the inadequate conduct emerges we will clean up the dog’s head, as well as the owner’s! This way a crisp and fast improvement will be achieved.

A more rare application of negative punishment may be carried out through satiation. Satiation is an application of negative punishment and it consists of keeping the positive stimulus active until it is no longer positive, either because of its prolonged administration or its intensity. Very often this is the most entertaining, effective and easiest way to eliminate certain operant behaviors. I sincerely think that my clever use of negative punishment through satiation is responsible for many of the private customers I have taken away from my competitors.

Whenever I had to go to an interview with potential customers and their dog kept on jumping on people I knew that no other firm would cause a better impression than ours. Why? It is simple. Customers would be confronted with three different strategies from our competitors. As we will see, even if all of them are effective when they are applied well, they are less amusing and clients do not appreciate them as much.

  1. Negative correction by the trainer like blocking the dog with the knee, bothering the dog in the hind legs or stepping on the leash to prevent the dog from jumping. Most of the clients do not like this strategy and, in fact, it may provoke a strong impression on many dogs. Furthermore, it requires skill.
  2. Punishing through suppression, which means to ignore dogs actively until they stop jumping. Once the bad behavior stops, the trainer will reinforce the dog. In addition to the problems I have already pointed out with this kind of intervention, some customers do not enjoy watching how their dogs keep on insisting. This phenomenon is due to the shape of the extinction curve and the over-arousal caused by the change of attitude from a social partner. Moreover, on that first session you can forget about achieving satisfactory results, judging them from the client’s point of view.
  3. Counterconditioning the dog with other conduct like sitting down. This is not always easy for clients on their first training day. They will be overloaded with information about what to ask their dogs for, what to teach them and what to assess.

So when I arrived with satiation in my toolbox, I said to my clients: Ok, your dogs want love and affection, let us give them that! So I told them to hug their dogs, and caress them enthusiastically. A few minutes later the dog would say: hey, that’s enough! But of course, we would keep on loving them!

The owners had fun doing this, it felt easy even on the first session and it produced faster results than any of the alternative strategies. I insist that the other strategies also lead to excellent results if applied correctly, but they require more time and clients like them less at the beginning.

I remember how funny it was for a client whose border collie was a sofa squatter not to let him walk down so that he would give up the habit of using it! Of course do not try this with lazy dogs, you may need some thirty hours for the intervention to work. It is very important that you adapt your techniques to each individual, as you wouldn’t try to fit a square peg in a round hole.

I really hope that you have enjoyed this article because I have unveiled one of my top commercial secrets to write it!

About luring

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In a previous post Richard Ibarburu commented about the excessive use of luring as an example of positive reinforcement based strategy that could potentially hinder the emergence of didactical choices. Richard’s wise comment made me realize that nowadays dog trainers, including me, always refer to luring to emphasize its drawbacks rather than its virtues.

Not long ago “Security Dogs”, a well-known dog training center, kindly invited me to a workshop they organized with Fernando Silva. At a certain moment Fernando made use of luring to induce a dog to perform a certain conduct. Two of the students looked at each other and one of them said: “luring!” Almost immediately a mock of deception followed in their faces. On top of that, the teacher himself explained almost apologetically to the audience: “This is too much luring for my taste but sometimes you have to do it”. It is my belief that at that particular moment and with the work Fernando was doing no other technique would have been better and more effective than luring. My claim makes sense if we take into account the high level of dog training that Fernando always exhibits.

So the question remains, is it really luring that bad? How did we reach the point where we all make bitter remarks as soon as we refer to this training technique? To answer these questions we have to analyze what is luring about as well as its effects on learning.

Luring is a training technique that consists of guiding dogs to perform a behavior directing their attention with a primary reinforcer, usually food. The continuous presence of the primary reinforcer contrasts with other techniques. Two important aspects derive from this definition:

  • The dog’s attention focuses on the primary reinforcer whereas other present stimuli lose salience.
  • Dogs feel that they are being continuously reinforced. In other words, reinforcement is not circumscribed to the point when they actually obtain the reinforcer.

From these considerations stem some important consequences regarding training. Such consequences should not be taken as good or bad in themselves. The right strategy is to assess in each case whether luring is playing in favor or against our training goals.

One of the main effects of using luring is that the dog will concentrate on the food to the detriment of other environmental stimuli. In other words, the dog may not perceive the clicker or even our commands, what can delay or worsen the learning of associations. On the opposite side of the scale, luring can be useful to help inexperienced dogs disconnect from the environment and learn to concentrate on their work. The latter effect may be of much use in private commercial training sessions in order to be able to work with dogs in the park where they play!

It is true that the timing is worse as the dog feels that he is being rewarded all the time. This may prevent us from giving full value to the dog’s higher quality behaviors. However, this effect can be useful to promote the establishment of a positive emotional association of the dog with the work. In some cases this is far more important. Luring is also useful to manipulate dogs with whom we have no previous bond, as it is the case in commercial training sessions.

In order to gain a broader perspective on this subject I am going to point out the benefits and drawbacks associated with the use of luring. In this way you will be able to understand when it is advantageous to rely on luring depending on three types of considerations: the specimen, the training stage and the type of work you are carrying out.

Benefits:

  • It helps training positive focus in dogs who have difficulties in concentrating for a prolonged period of time.
  • It promotes concentration in difficult environments and situations, a feature that as we have already seen can be useful to work in the park where the dog regularly plays and walks, or also when the training field is crowded with other dogs. Some trainers boast of working without resorting to luring, but then it turns out that their dogs are unable to work if they are not all by themselves and in complete silence. Wouldn’t it be more practical to plan for focus training during a couple of days relying on luring rather than to keep on organizing this sort of “mystical” training sessions?
  • It relegates certain stimuli when we do not want the dog to perceive them. This may help dogs in overcoming small lacks of confidence. In aggression cases, it may also allow to deviate the dog’s attention from other dogs or persons. At the same time we will be achieving a positive emotional state and, as dogs feel that they are being rewarded all the time, we are also reinforcing them for not offering aggressive behavior. This may work as a good kick start to counter-conditioning processes in the frame of behavior therapies.
  • It helps to train motor patterns as opposed to final conducts. In certain behaviors related to sports our aim is not so much the final position the dog reaches but how such position is reached. Thus I am not just interested in teaching the dog to lie down but in the dog performing a given motor pattern that ends in the lie-down position. The difference between final conducts and motor patterns is of the utmost importance for sport training. In this regard, to attain the desirable motor patterns from the beginning and to fix them in the dog’s muscular memory, luring is simply irreplaceable.
  • It would be difficult, if not impossible, to induce certain conducts without luring.
  • It is very useful to mitigate hesitations and lacks of confidence. Some dogs may want to work and to keep progressing but if they are sensitive they can become loaded with tension. In relation to hesitant conducts, greater consistency is achieved by using luring. Subsequently, on this more solid foundation, one may return to working with other training techniques.

Drawbacks:

  • Poor perception of the environment, including conditioned reinforcers like the clicker, the commands, and even the handler! This will pass its toll on the quality of the work which will be slower and less clear in relation to the parameters mentioned.
  • It promotes maximum concentration on selfish behavior engines. Since dogs are following the lure, they will fail to perceive the need to synchronize with their guides or to pay attention to the handler’s indications. Affection is also dramatically relegated. In sum, the coordination and activation of social engines is absent.
  • Poor perception of signals and subtle stimuli. Dogs are so absolutely focused on the primary reinforcer that they will be blind to other indications we want to introduce to fine-tune or to progress in our work.
  • It is “hard” to switch to other ways of working the behavior. Transitions are one of the main problems with luring and many dogs experience severe problems with them. However, once again, we can exploit this weak point to our benefit. This is what we do in our training proposal by introducing the so called “counter luring” step. It consists of providing dogs contradictory information, the lure may tell him to sit while the handler says “lie down”. This way we train our dogs to give priority to the latter so that they become more pro-social and less focused on individual reinforcers.
  • There is no activation of problem solving abilities. Putting “the carrot in front of the donkey” (and I am quoting from a comment to a previous article) does not engage problem solving skills at all.
  • Self-reinforcement is also completely absent from the picture because the dog is reinforced continuously and problem solving is not engaged.
  • Learning resulting from luring is rough and unrefined. Since dogs’ attention is totally focused on the reinforcer, they will only learn the most evident parts of the trained behavior. Subtle steps ahead or modifications to the main conduct will go unnoticed.
  • Dogs do not act proactively, they merely react. Dogs depend totally on us and other external stimuli to perform the trained conduct.
  • In this way, the autonomy of dogs is undermined. Hence they will be unable to work without strong support and will not take the initiative to offer the behaviors.

Overall, we should take into account our training objectives and our training possibilities to assess whether relying on luring may be of help or not. Sometimes luring may act as a false friend. Beyond its apparent simplicity it may hinder the achievement of the results we are aiming for. Keeping its pros and cons in mind will help you to take the right decision to use it or not. This way you will be able to proudly say “yes, I also use luring”.

Not only dogs: Now also sea lions, parrots and dolphins

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Hi everyone,

In a previous post I hinted that we were on the verge of closing a very important agreement for EDUCAN. Today I can finally announce that the project is already on its feet!

We have signed an agreement with ZOOS IBÉRICOS, an entity that belongs to Parques Reunidos which is the company that owns more zoos and aquariums all over the world. The purpose of the agreement is to implement our cognitive-emotional training methodology with various species. We will start with sea lions, parrots and dolphins at the Madrid Zoo.

Since I am thrilled with the project I would easily exceed the limits of the post. To prevent it, I will just quote the section of the agreement with ZOOS IBÉRICOS referring to this partnership. I have edited the document just adding bold characters to emphasize what I believe are the most relevant pieces of information. This will also please my “webmaster of the universe” who always insists on me to use bold characters to emphasize important passages in blog articles.

OBJECT OF THE AGREEMENT

The main object of the partnership between the two parties to the present agreement is to design, implement and evaluate the results of the application of new training protocols for various species. For this purpose the main yardsticks will be the three pillars of the cognitive-emotional training methodology: (1) the exploitation of the cognitive skills of each species, (2) the assessment of their emotional state, and (3) the understanding of their unique social behavior patterns.

This main objective can be broken down in two different operational aims:

1. Improved animal welfare:

The new protocols will pursue the improvement in the quality of life and working conditions of the animals. Regarding the choice of behaviors, both parties agree to give priority to animal welfare over other considerations like the appeal to the public and how spectacular the chosen conducts seem to be.

According to recent ethological findings animals generate conduct differently depending on whether they are in an environment where they have to fight for survival (i.e., scenarios characterized by predatory risks, resource scarcity or the need of an active defense of the territory) or in a welfare environment (i.e., scenarios where there are plenty of resources and no foreseeable risks for the animal).

Most of the current training techniques, including many of those relying on positive reinforcement processes, are based on the survival environment paradigm, what worsens the results even with animals who enjoy an optimal quality of life.

One of the main technical and ethical purposes of this partnership is to develop working protocols based on the way animals generate conduct in welfare environments. This means that animals will not work driven by the need to ensure their survival but solely by the motivation to improve their physical, emotional and social welfare.

2. Research:

The aim is to apply state-of-the-art knowledge on ethological issues to animal training, as well as to evaluate the results deriving from this implementation.

The present project is pioneer in:

a. Exploiting the cognitive processes known in each species for the purpose of training animals. Until now operant conditioning has been the main working tool for animal trainers. Operant conditioning has the advantage of being applicable to all of the species typically involved in animal training programs. However, cognitive ethology has proven that different species can have various mental processes like problem solving, learning by imitation (as shown in Pepperberg’s rival model in relation to psittacidae). […] “[B]y taking advantage of these specific capabilities the quality of the work will increase. Since many of the referred cognitive processes are self-reinforcing, their use drastically reduces the need to rely on external sources of reinforcement and helps attaining more consistent conducts while improving the emotional state of the animals. In other words, animals enjoy offering the behaviors and see them as goals in themselves rather than as mere gates of access to food (i.e., the normal state of affairs when primary extrinsic reinforcers are relied upon). Cognitive processes have the further advantages of allowing self-assessment to animals and improving their intrinsic reinforcement capabilities.

A further advantage of the new methodology is that training sessions will work as environmental enrichment interventions thereby improving animal welfare. In addition, fewer sessions will be needed to maintain the behaviors, the improvements will be achieved faster and the quality of the work will be more solid.

b. Evaluating and fine-tuning the emotional state of animals during training sessions and shows, decreasing their levels of distress and improving stress management by trained animals, promoting positive emotional states in them and developing reliable instruments for tracking emotional welfare in trained animals.

c. Developing protocols to take advantage of those social processes characteristic of the species, like affective bonding, so that the interaction between animals and trainers in the course of the working sessions and exhibitions becomes a desirable and self-reinforcing objective. Nowadays we know that affection is an important drive in many species of social mammals. Notwithstanding the fact that many trainers have exploited these aspects intuitively for a long time, this working methodology has not been tested in a systematic and scientific manner. Thus one of the objectives of this partnership is to create protocols for those species covered by the project.”

…and a last excerpt from this agreement: “one of the tasks entrusted to EDUCAN consists of:

– Designing protocols, schemes and working techniques for different species.”

Overall, it constitutes a VERY exciting project which is going to demand lots of work from us (probably we will have to restrict some commercial activities to be able to sleep once in a while). However, it is a huge step towards the long due paradigm update in relation to animal training.

I am very grateful to Miguel Bueno Brinkmann, biologist and head curator of birds and sea mammals at the Madrid Zoo, and Pablo Roy, head trainer for sea lions at the same institution, for their interest and invaluable help in making this project come true.

I AM DEFINITELY THRILLED

To suceed or not to fail?

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Let me explain to you which are the main categories I use to classify animal trainers. There are of course different training schools, different modalities, and various kinds of stimuli that different trainers choose to apply or not to apply. These are all important considerations and yet they are less important than the distinction between the following two categories: (1) those who train their dogs not to fail, and (2) those who train their dogs to succeed.

I want to clarify from the outstart that I am persuaded that dogs should be trained to succeed, and not merely to avoid mistakes. For some years I followed the opposite path and this is perhaps the reason why I am convinced that my current position is the right one. We all know that nobody can be as convinced as a converted.

The vast majority of trainers sponsor the competing view, errorless training. They tend to think that errors are dangerous and hence you hear sentences like “don’t let your dogs make mistakes if you don’t want them to learn incorrectly”. This is also linked to the fact that we feel uneasy watching how our dogs make mistakes in the execution of the behaviors we are teaching them.

Thus preventing the dog from making any mistake is the priority for many trainers. This means that our energy and attention are focused in the task of monitoring errors and choosing techniques to prevent them, block them or correct them. This way dogs finally succeed because of the many things they do not do, not because of the things they are actively trying. Training sessions are devoted to create “secure situations”, to close doors, to limit options…

There are several problems with this way of training which, by the way, is not circumscribed to trainers using aversive methods (many trainers who adhere to positive reinforcement based methodologies, even cognitive trainers, sponsor the errorless training view). Here is a list:

First, after a period of time working under these guidelines dogs, who are not silly at all, realize the nature of our goal. Their voluntary attention is then focused on locating the behaviors they should not do. This way they become more effective in not doing than in doing. This is the corollary of the general work scheme we are implementing and we ought to be comfortable with that by-product.

Second, errorless training is exhausting from the emotional perspective. Just think about one of those movies where a young and promising sport star is pressed by the trainer/father/agent who takes great care in underlining every error that is being made. Of course the demanding figures are full of true love and good intentions for their pupil, but as this sort of torture goes on and on, the rising star’s original motivation is killed. Then, the future star decides to send everyone to hell and runs away to Idaho with his or her better half to settle a ranch.

Our dogs cannot run away to Idaho to settle a ranch even when they get fed up of training with us. Therefore, we must be very careful and take seriously our responsibility to prevent the dog from getting emotionally overloaded. This does not mean that one should not demand effort and implication from the learner. However, we should realize that by emphasizing errors we will be undermining our learners with insecurities and draining their emotional energy. Imagine how you would feel if you had to go to a job where your boss would remind you EVERYDAY of the mistakes you make or would tell you to be very careful not to make any. That’s not the way to build up self-confidence, implication and work-team.

Third, even if at the beginning it is easier to train the dog not to fail (learning not to do is faster than learning to do), we will soon realize that there are so many possible mistakes that it would be impossible to cover all of them in a person’s lifespan. In contrast, there is only one successful conduct in each case. Hence it is much more comfortable and expedient for both dogs and trainers to focus on that.

Summing up, in my opinion it is very important to build the dog’s head to succeed. For this purpose one should allow initial mistakes and inform the dog about them without worrying. Errors are a necessary part of active learning. We should devote our attention to the right answers so that the dogs’ attention is also directed to them.

Later on, when dogs consistently work to achieve success and their mental scheme is already built up, we will be able to give more importance to those mistakes that arise since this would not create other problems.

Training in welfare environments (I)

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In a previous article I commented about welfare or comfort signals which can be used to evaluate how dogs are feeling. My topic today regards one of the main pillars of our work: the different learning and conduct generation that dogs exhibit depending on whether they are in a survival environment or in a welfare environment.

Given the importance of the topic for the design of training techniques, this will only be an introductory article. Actually the methodologies for teaching and learning vary dramatically between both scenarios. An adequate understanding of the underlying relationships will enable us to make a systematic treatment of the mechanisms that guarantee that dogs enjoy working, as well as to replicate the training, without excessively relying on the talent of either the dog or the trainer.

First, I need to clarify that working in one type of environment or the other does not determine the quality of the work. In both scenarios we can rely on either positive or negative stimuli to promote learning. Then, what is the difference? What varies is the way these stimuli are used.

  • In survival environments animals have no guaranteed access to resources (e.g., food and water) and their safety is not taken for granted either.
  • In welfare environments animals have abundant resources as well as guaranteed security.

As noticed earlier, some species –including dogs and human beings- have a different way of learning and generating behavior depending on whether they are in one kind of environment or the other.

It is important to realize that in welfare scenarios the aim of dogs is to have a good time, increase their welfare, whereas in survival scenarios the aim is to obtain resources crucial for survival and security. The behavior differs and so the learning does.

It is crucial to understand this bifurcation because probably most of us live in a welfare scenario. Let me put an example. Almost certainly some of you have been looking for a particular item, even visiting different shops for days in order to find it. It does not matter what the item in question was, that damned Charlie Patton Yazoo L-1020 record, a particular book or some other thing. Probably when you returned home you found an empty fridge. You probably thought, “I’m exhausted, I don’t feel like going to the supermarket at the moment. I’ll do it tomorrow.” Summing up, we are capable of generating an enormous amount of conduct to get something which is not an actual need and yet we refuse to walk round the corner to buy food, that is, a primary resource crucial for survival. Isn’t it weird? No, it is not. The explanation is simple.

We know that we are not going to starve to death. In fact, we can probably obtain food whenever we want to. Once a primary resource is guaranteed its value as a motivator decreases. In contrast the self-reinforcement value and the extra-quality of life represented by our desired item gains a greater value as a motivator. This is one of the first differences between welfare and survival scenarios. In a welfare environment any thing or event that is self-reinforcing effectively work as positive stimulus, whereas primary stimuli lose effectiveness. In survival scenarios the opposite holds.

A second difference between the two types of scenario regards the way animals manage negative stimuli. For a negative stimulus to trigger conduct in a survival environment, it has to be clearly perceived by the learner. Moreover, if it is to work, it has to give rise to a negative emotional state that warns the animal about a possible risk. In contrast, in a welfare scenario it is much more effective to rely on low intensity negative stimuli. These are capable of interfering with the enjoyment of pleasant activities but without overruling the positive emotional state stemming from the latter. As a consequence, dogs will generate a great amount of conduct to offset the interference to keep enjoying the pleasant activity. This is the reason why it is so effective to introduce minor bothers in shaping sessions (e.g., attaching a post-it or a rubber band to the dog). This strategy also helps dogs to confront problems and teaches them to manage stress.

It is important to know that we cannot jump from one kind of environment to the other at will. We have to choose one of the two categories for each kind of work and be coherent henceforth. If you plan to rely exclusively on food as a reinforcer, it is better to propose a survival environment, because then food will have greater value and the learning obtained will be more consistent and of a higher quality. On the other hand, if your dog has a great time solving problems and experiences training as an aim in itself, pick up a welfare environment.

Teaching the dog to go away

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Doubtless the most important behavior we can teach to our dogs in order to improve their quality of life is to come when called. A reliable recall, one that works even if the dog is distracted in other activities, allows handlers to grant dogs free range so that they can explore the environment.

In this article I will not tackle the issue of how to train a good recall. My topic for today regards some of the risks incurred when training a bomb proofed recall, as well as the way I work with puppies before starting recall training to avoid these side effects.

Many years ago Jaime Parejo and I were in close contact. Jaime is, by the way, a terrific trainer, a re-known specialist in search and rescue (S&R) and a person I deeply appreciate. At that moment he was writing the book about the “chest method” (“método arcón”) that would gain him recognition all over the world. We used to speak lots about his work of course. I remember Jaime would use the term “yo-yo effect” to refer to the tendency of some dogs to come back to their handlers once they had reached a certain distance threshold. He had realized that this problem derived from excessive recall work and that it was very harmful for S&R dogs as it severely limited their working autonomy.

Jaime hit the bull’s eye with this observation, a big share of the population of trainers’ dogs were not able to go away beyond a certain distance. I have been always more interested in the identification of the reasons why dogs behave in a certain way, and in taking advantage of these tendencies, than in designing specific techniques. Hence I analyzed the problem from this perspective. I realized that, until then, and mostly in an unconscious way, I considered such effect to be beneficial. After all it is the dog who takes the trouble to stay close to the handler. However, after reflecting on Jaime’s words, my opinion changed and so did my way of training recalls and, in general, my way of taking care of dogs.

On top of my affection for him, Jaime will always have my recognition for helping me gaining this insight. My dogs have lived happier lives since then.

Dogs who exhibit this “yo-yo” tendency do not enjoy their country explorations as much as they could. The physical exercise they practice is also limited and so is the outlet from stress that they enjoy. After all, they cannot give free reign to their innate motor patterns.

This is a common problem with dogs whose guardians are professional trainers and, as I have said, it used to be a problem with my dogs. These dogs are always paying attention to their handlers and they need that the latter provide them instructions to be able to amuse themselves. If they run after a rabbit by any chance they will come back overwhelmed because when the chase is over they will find themselves far from their handler and this causes them bad feelings. The problem with some other dogs is the opposite: they have the time of their lives when they are in countryside and come back when they feel like it more or less. However, I will tackle this second category of problems in a future article, not today.

To achieve welfare with active breeds it is crucial that they are able to run freely and explore vast areas. The notion of health as the absence of diseases has long being overcome: To achieve welfare the focus should not be on avoiding stress and anxiety. For dogs to blossom, it is far more important that they can live full and happy dog lives.

Nowadays the first thing I teach to my puppies is to go away rather than the recall, so that they can fully enjoy their walks. Puppies absorb every bit. Puppyhood is a stage when it is very hard for us trainers not to make our dogs too dependent on us. It is difficult for us just to walk them without any training. And if we give up to the temptation, then it will be very tough for the puppies to be at ease unless they are engaged in some kind of activity with us.

I have to recognize that for me it is very easy to train the behavior of going away: the back door of my garden opens directly to the countryside, plus my adult dogs already master this conduct and the puppy will willingly accompany them in their adventures. During this stage I am very careful not to make anything that promotes dependency: I don’t hide so that the dog does not have to worry about where I am, I don’t reward the puppies every time they approach me, I just walk and let the puppies realize how wonderful and interesting the world is, full of different smells, sounds etc. I want them to experience how good it feels when they run, jump and learn to use their bodies. I want them to behave as dogs with my adult dogs, that they learn that in the countryside the most amusing partners are other dogs, not me.

It almost looks like the reverse image of the guidelines to build the recall one would read in many books. And yet I am very proud of my recall work. As a matter of fact it is the behavior my colleagues ask me about more often when they see how consistently my dogs respond. My dogs do not expect any other reward than naked social reinforcement and as soon as I release them, they run away and start exploring once again without keeping an eye on me in case there is a new recall in the pipeline. However, if I called them once again, they would come without the slightest hesitation.

Of course I recognize that the privileged conditions where I train play a prominent role in making this outcome possible. I can train in a secure area. I know that my adult dogs will come when called and that the puppy will follow them.

As I said earlier, I have always been attached to the idea that if we know how a mechanism works (even a negative one) we will be able to exploit it to our advantage. Thus, notwithstanding I make every effort to prevent my dogs from acquiring the “yo-yo effect” on a permanent basis, I apply a technique that allows me to engage this mechanism at will so as to limit the range of movement dogs enjoy temporarily. It consists of recalling them many times in a row at the beginning of the particular walk, ten or twelve times will suffice. I recall them every time they reach the distance I need. This way the dogs know that they should not go beyond that limit in this particular walk and I can adjust the distance to unusual environmental conditions. However, I never start practicing this kind of work until the dog has learnt to come when called without being too dependent on me.

If you empower your puppies to go away and to behave expansively, you will improve the quality of your walks with them. Not only will your puppies have more fun behaving as real DOGS (with capital letters), but you will also grin and amuse yourself contemplating how they blossom. Take my word: dogs deprived of their autonomy could never be as happy.

Bomb proofing mistakes

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Isn’t it surprising how easy a clean conduct varies and yet how hard it is to modify flawed conducts? Proofing mistakes embedded within the trained conduct is a common problem among animal trainers of all levels.

Take a defective heeling behavior for instance, when dogs either walk crossing their handlers’ path, or behind or in front of them. A further example would involve those far from brilliant static shifts of position, when the latency before offering the behavior is really terrible. Why is it so difficult to get rid off the problems just described? It is as if it was only easy to modify a behavior that is satisfactorily shaped from the start!

So what is the explanation? As it is usually the case in animal training, the truth is that it is our fault. There are two reasons behind.

On the one hand, the technique applied to shape the behavior is of the utmost importance here. We should keep the final behavioral goal in mind and refuse any beginnings which are incompatible with it. Trainers may experience something similar to the “blank page syndrome” when they start working with a new animal. Just as writers do, it is normal that we are fraught with anxiety when contemplating the long road that lies ahead of us. There remains so much to do before being able to present our work that the task looks daunting!

When we face difficulties the temptation to take easy shortcuts is strong. We don’t want to get stuck with that particular exercise and hence we settle for a downgraded version of the original behavioral goal. In a previous post (“Less is more”) I wrote on this subject. What I want to emphasize now is the importance of reflecting on the influence that today’s training session will bear not on the training session tomorrow but in those that will be carried in two or three years time, once most of our work plan will be in place. In other words, will then the lessons taught today help us or will they hinder further learning so that it will be necessary to clean up the dog’s head before progressing?

Let me illustrate this point with an example: imagine that I want my dog to lie down by moving backwards in order to make the final behavior look faster in execution as well as to prevent the dog from gaining ground when he is supposed to keep a perfectly static position. Having set that objective, suppose that I start rewarding my dog for offering a two-stoke lie down. In other words, I reward the dog for sitting down before lying down. My laziness will increase the amount of work for both of us at a later stage. Thus it would be wiser to be a bit more patient and wait for the particular lie down behavior I am after. In fact it would be a far better policy to reward an approximation to the correct behavior than settling for a complete but flawed behavior.

On the other hand, there is a further and more fundamental problem for even after teaching a behavior with mistakes to a dog, there must be the possibility to get rid off the flaws. Theoretically, it suffices to reinforce those instances where the dog gets closer to the set behavioral goal. Why is it then that the mistakes become sort of bomb proofed?

“Frailty, thy name is dog trainer.” May be we just attended a competition (either as part of the audience or as competitors) and with the boost in motivation we adopt the firm decision to become stricter in order to correct the problematic heeling. We start training without rewarding any flawed repetitions. However, after a busy week, we lower down the criterion once again and settle for the behavior as imperfect as it used to be. Subsequently, perhaps we attend a training workshop where we learn a wonderful technique than can help us in sorting out the problem. Again we experience a boost in motivation and start training with a stricter criterion in mind. But progress may be made at a slower pace than expected, so we relax the criterion again and go back to square one. To feel better we may think that John Smith had a flawed heeling behavior too and he won the world championship anyway. Few persons ask themselves if the rest of the pack is as good as John’s…

Anyway, the point is that this sort of vicious circle goes on and on. At the end of the day the result is that the incorrect forms of the conduct are subject to a variable reinforcement schedule whereas correct behaviors are typically kept under a continuous reinforcement schedule. Remember that behaviors on an intermittent schedule are less susceptible to extinction. That is why we cannot get rid off the mistakes no matter how much effort we think we are putting.

The conclusion is that you should never train behaviors under intermittent reinforcement schedules until you have reached their definitive form, at least if you work solely on conditioning processes. Otherwise the behavior will be harder to modify. This is an extremely important piece of advice for new trainers, but one that is often overseen. In fact, in Spain I have heard just two instructors regularly underlining this fact in their classes, Carlos Bueren and Javier Moral. I think it is an extremely important point that we all should emphasize and clarify to novel trainers.

When less is more

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Imagine the following situation, a dog trainer is teaching a dog to sit. It is one of their first training sessions, may be the first one. In order to teach this particular conduct the trainer has decided to rely on a certain technique which he masters well. For the purpose of this discussion it is irrelevant which training technique it is used, whether it involves a clicker, luring or helping the dog with the hands. All that matters is that the dog sits and hence things seem to be working for our tandem.

However, a few repetitions later the trainer realizes that the dog is standing up immediately after sitting down: “Damn it! Let’s do a few more trials to see if we can sort the problem out.” But the problem does not fade away and the dog keeps on standing up. So the trainer introduces a small aide in the hope this will help them overcoming the hurdle. Eventually he manages and proceeds to the next training step, teaching the dog a second behavior, lying down.

Again our tandem faces problems. Notwithstanding the techniques applied by the trainer seem to work at the beginning and the dog lies down, the latter refuses to stay in that position. The trainer then decides to put in practice a technique that he learnt at a workshop. He did not like the course that much because the underlying training philosophy was far away from his, but he thinks that this particular technique can do the trick here. Et voilà, … it works! So he finally manages to make the dog stay in the position.

The trainer in our tale is incurring what I believe is one of the most frequent mistakes during the initial stages of animal training: he is adding rather than subtracting. In fact, he is asking the wrong question, “What can I do to promote that the dog remains in the position?” as opposed to what the more fruitful question would be, “Why does the dog stand up?” or “What is causing this second adjunct behavior?”

The fact that the dog willingly sits down after the first training sessions means that we are on the right track. However, why does the dog stand up so fast? The dog offers this second behavior for a given reason. Something is happening either: (1) in the physical sphere, may be the dog feels uncomfortable on the surface we are working or is experiencing pain; (2) in the mental sphere, the dog might believe that needs to move to obtain something; or (3) in the emotional sphere, perhaps the dog is aroused or feels insecure.

We need to realize that when we start training an animal we are laying down the foundations which will determine the animal’s understanding about the entire learning process and the way we work together. At this stage we are teaching the animals what to expect from us and what we expect from them.

What is wrong with a “patchwork” approach? By adding different techniques that do not share a common basis, we will be losing coherence and blurring the big picture for our learners. The patchwork approach implies renouncing to abide by a definite training ideology. Instead trainers jump from one difficulty to another merely attempting to use whatever they have in their toolboxes to sort out the problems they come across. Overall, it means that by obtaining the short run benefit of teaching a given conduct we will be hindering further development in the long run. This is so because nothing learnt on these premises will contribute to support other prior or subsequent lessons. In a nutshell, the general learning scheme will be missing.

Going back to our example, when one realizes the dog stands up after sitting down, one should not think which technique can be applied to obtain the stay from the dog, but rather clarify why the dog suddenly stands up in the first place. This is the factor that needs to be identified in order to take it away from the equation and build solid and consistent foundations that support a continuous advance of our learner. That is why less may be more.

Summing up, at the initial stages it is much more important to teach our dogs the code of communication, that is, to teach them how to learn, than any given behaviors or tricks. In fact, any behaviors at this point are taught as a means of conveying to our learners the codes of communication. Needless to say such codes will vary among different training schools, and even between two different trainers who belong to the same school. If these codes are not transmitted clearly our work will suffer in the long term. Moreover, failure to do so will compromise the teaching of more complex or subtle behaviors.

And yet, it is at this initial stage when dog trainers are more prone to fall into “traps” that prevent their dogs from adequately understanding how to learn. The most prominent example of such traps is an excessive concern for achieving any particular conduct. It is this biased frame of mind that leads many trainers to start looking for techniques to help the dog performing. Very often

Training facial expressions

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A few days ago a colleague of mine commented to me about the difficulties she was facing in finding new suitable conducts for practicing free shaping with her dog. On the one hand, the dog knew so many conducts that it was far from easy to think of a new one. On the other hand, the number of choices was further limited by physical ailments since the dog was old and suffered from hip dysplasia. Thus my friend was afraid that her dog would be deprived of this joyful source of mental activity precisely when it was most needed.
Let me clarify from the outstart that my favorite mental activation task is not the practice of free shaping but rather problem solving. Nevertheless, I was sorry to learn that my friend and her dog were no longer able to keep on practicing the exercises that they both had enjoyed in the past.

I know what many of you would have said in my position: just be creative. I told her the same, though the tough part was to find new conducts. No matter what I proposed, this dog knew how to do it. Being creative is not that easy!

What girls! They really knew everything from A to Z. That is, until I mentioned the training of facial expressions. In my opinion facial expressions is the most challenging group of conducts one can train with a clicker and, for the same reason, the one that is more helpful for trainers who want to improve their skills.

Facial expressions can be broken down into three independent units: eye expressions, position of the ears and of the lips. Some people choose to include the head position too but, compared to the other three units, this is much simpler to capture. Thus trainers can spend many hours focusing on one of the three branches and, subsequently, merging different combinations of them. As a by-product of this intensive practice trainers will find that they become much more skillful and can capture conducts involving bigger muscles effortlessly.

Where should you start? Follow a gradual task approach and start with someting rather simple like squinting the eyes. This will take you a while because prompting and capturing conducts that depend upon such small muscles is a sui generis practice indeed. One could say that facial expressions within the free shaping domain compare to neurovascular surgery in the context of hippocampus-amygdala surgery, such is the degree of precision and finesse required.

Once you hace succeeded in scanning the eyes, try to capture an upward movement of the lips. Complete the exercise shaping the conduct of folding back the ears. But remember that you are not allowed to press on your dog to get results.

So far so good? Next step, you can create different conducts singling out isolated elements or combining them in groups of two or three. This is only the beginning for now you can start teaching different actions involving each one of the three expression units referred to above, eyes, ears and lips. Try to capture the behavior of moving the eyes downward or upward, not the head just the eyeballs. Next, scan the forward motion of the lips as if your dog was about to say “wuf!”. Try to shape tense lips, ears up …

Finally, combine all the pieces of conduct to create different facial expression puzzles. It will take you many months before you run out of options. Who said thad dog trainers cannot play with Mr Potato? A further advantage of these calm conducts is that they suit all dogs, also old ones like my friend´s.

If you are a clicker star we also have an advanced level, you know, the sort of things one is advised not to try at home without first consulting a professional. Do you think you can manage to shape a different expression in each side of your dog’s face? Try scanning one eye open while the other remains closed, an ear up and the other down, or half of the lip up, as if your dog was about to growl, while the other half is relaxed. If you are good enough your dog will be offered a juicy Hollywood contract starring as two face’s best friend, one of the villains in the Batman movie saga.

Once you have completed the training give me a call for I will be envious, though I am pretty sure that by that time there will be 15 videoclips with 300 different facial expressions uploaded in youtube by former agility world champion Pere Saavedra. C’est la vie…

The socialization of sensitive breeds

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Keeping with problems common to sensitive working breeds (typically border collies, Shetland sheepdogs, Belgian and Australian shepherds), there is a theme that began to intrigue me several years ago, there were many dogs of this nature in the hands of competitors or professionals who showed fears and insecurities, which were always blamed on poor socialization.

When the owner claimed to have properly socialized the dog and it continued with these «ghosts», it was put down to:

  1. The owner lying and having not taken it out to as many places as they say.
  2. The owner being a rough guy and having broken the character of those dogs.
  3. With these dogs you know, one always comes out with ghosts no matter how well you do it.

These three arguments are real, and in many cases the dog’s final bad character is due to at least one of these problems.

But at one point, when I got involved more seriously with Belgian Shepherds, I decided to look deeper.

The truth is that there were many people who were working according to what we understand as a socialization model: since the puppy came home at the right age and was raised by a responsible breeder and lover of the breed, they started to take it to thousands of sites and new situations. Afternoons were reserved for going to the airport, neighborhood parties, the mall …

Every day we work to keep our puppy from becoming one of the specimens that are overly affected, and in many cases these concerned owners were professionals or competitors in training, with an above average level of knowledge, experience and involvement.

By making a small census (without rigor of study) between acquaintances I came across a troubling finding: the percentage of dogs with fears was equal among those whose socialization was a model and among those who were at the mercy of God, growing up in kennels or other types of isolation. Always remember that I am referring to individuals of the above mentioned breeds.

This could lead us to think that this problem was entirely innate and what we did made no difference during the dreaded critical period.

But there were two details that told us that this was not so:

  1. The first, more general, were studies in a wider range of breeds showing that isolated individuals had more problems than what we understand as well socialized individuals.
  2. The other was more specific, if we took a third group of individuals of these breeds, which had grown up with an intermediate level of socialization, we found that these were the ones which showed substantially fewer problems.

This group is for individuals who took the dog for walks to the same sites over and over and for less enthusiastic professionals who when they could took the dog somewhere new, but without making it a daily obligation. These were the ones with higher quality of character in their dogs.

Obviously it follows that there is an optimum range of outings to new places, but I was more interested in finding out why, rather than finding what the range is through statistical analysis.

I found the solution in stress studies, stress generates additional activation of the organism. Although this stress is overcome and managed properly, it will require a minimum time for the dog to recover and to get rid of residual stress, this also happens with processes of stress (positive stress, like the type we have fifteen before a date).

By making many trips to new environments, more sensitive dogs undergo continuous activation of stress and when they get to go on the next trip they had still not been able to recover, until it reaches a point where the accumulation of residual stress has the same harmful effect as lack of socialization, and whoever thinks that we do not need to recover from positive stress after a challenging active holiday should remember how they usually need a couple of days of recovery before returning to work.

Therefore we must take special care to let the puppy successfully recover and rid itself of residual stress: playing with dogs or acquaintances in a safe environment, remember that regular (and safe!) people and places act as inducers of calm in social mammals. Furthermore, in the Socialization, continued interaction with known individuals (social group members) is more important than introduction to new environments, and we work as if the main socializing element is to learn new things. Error.

Rest time is also important. Massages help if the dog accepts them (in Denmark and Norway home dog masseurs are becoming common and dog agility competitors are some of their main customers).

With respect to optimal frequency, although the data was collected haphazardly and must not be taken otherwise, we found that two, maximum three weekly trips to new settings is enough and with more trips than that there is risk of excess.

But to play with friends, the only limit is the fatigue limit! So: More park and fewer neighborhood parties (even if there are no churros).

The timing and distribution of activities of those trips is also very important, but I’ll develop that idea in another article so as to not burden you with a huge block of text.

Management of negative emotional states in sensitive dogs

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A few days ago a new friend asked me about the problems of his seven-month sheltie: in certain situations, he showed fear and seized up. This was a problem for his quality of life and its future potential in Agilty.

Specifically the car and the pet carrier caused drooling, emotional block and even escape responses, when he came home he took more than ten minutes to recover and start playing with my puppy.

Lately many sensitive and intelligent dog breeds, particularly border collies, Shetland sheepdogs, Australian and Belgian shepherds are appearing with issues or mismanagement of negative emotions.

It is normal for sensitive races with nerve responses to be affected by something timely, if they are not taught to properly manage negative emotions it can create insecurity, fearful responses and even more severe problems.

Apparently the sheltie had a bad transfer when a puppy when he was sent by courier (not usually a good idea to send a puppy by courier, but sometimes it is the only option). This generated a bad emotional association with both the car and the pet carrier.

Emotions are associated by classical conditioning and are more consistent than an association made by operant conditioning, furthermore self-feeding processes of the emotional state often appear: the fear (the combination of internal state, physiological reaction and tendency to action) generates more fear by itself, without there being more external stimuli. When this happens, the association can not be extinguished, and he will often start to associate other things with that fear, for example our sheltie could go by car on the road to work, and when he gets out, with the fear caused by the car, may associate it with the road, generating fear to this and these transfers can increase indefinitely.

It is fundamental to the quality of life for a dog to be prepared to properly manage negative emotional states or we will have low tolerance and poor stress management, a tendency towards inconsistent behavior, insecurity and unhappiness of the dog.

In this case I recommended the following:

Games for getting into the pet carrier and the car: Putting some tasty food inside, we leave it to the dog to decide whether to enter, we gradually make it more difficult to access both the car and the pet carrier (side pet carrier, door ajar, door stuck against a wall so that you need to move the pet carrier to get in, crumpled newspapers filling the pet carrier…). It is very important to do this well, commands like «very good» must not appear, nor should successes be clicked. We are not teaching an action by operant conditioning, we do not want external reinforcements and confirmations, what we are doing is putting the dog in a situation perceived to be emotionally negative (heavens, the pet carrier!!), by making something of interest appear, we create a small conflict: I want the food, but I’m afraid to enter. It is important that the dog decide if it is worth it to face the negative or not, if he decides to do it, he will be learning something more important than making the pet carrier something positive: he will learn that even if he has a negative emotion he can work on it and with that voluntary confrontation with fear, he gets results and comes to a positive emotional state. We are teaching him to properly manage fear, not by eliminating a particular point. The reinforcement must be as small as possible and the difficulty must be increasingly difficult, so we replace the external reinforcement (food) with the internal reinforcement (troubleshooting). Finally we will get him to go into the pet carrier and the car for fun and as an end in itself; with that we will have «turned the tables» on the emotional association.

But if we just do this, although we improve the dog’s particular problem, we have not finished preparing him to properly manage negative emotions.

Since overcoming this problem we will continue to work: in the normal training sessions, we will occasionally use low-intensity negative stimuli (a paste of hair on one leg, a post-it on one ear …) so that he sees that through working he accesses a positive emotional state even if slight discomforts appear.

In my opinion, training must get the dog to access a more positive emotional state more than avoiding negative stimuli at all costs, I think there is much confusion between negative stimuli and negative emotional state and that leads to very harmful overprotective training in puppies, who must build up their management tools of negative situations, we must know how to gently introduce negative elements to teach the dog that they can be overcome, without this we would not be preparing them to have an optimal quality of life.

Learning and thinking through mental images (and II)

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Thinking through images is faster and more fixed than doing it through symbols, however it is less refined and precise.

This is clearly seen with an example: if we think of digital watches and watches with hands*, it is quicker to recognize the time on the image based one (hands), with one look we know what time it is, whereas when we look at the numbers on a digital clock we need a longer glance and greater mental effort. Instead the information that the mental image gives us is less accurate, we will often respond to the person who asked the time with phrases like «ten past», while the digital will give us highly exact information like «and twelve «. This shows us that the way we receive and process information is very different in dogs and in humans. Dogs, because of their thinking through mental images, are faster in receiving information and, consequently, in their response to this information.

This speed is a problem for us, we need much more time to set our heavy mental machinery in motion, and dogs often go ahead of us during training and respond to situations that we are just beginning to consider. If we do not take into account this difference in speed, we find ourselves in very frustrating situations with ineffective training.

* Of course, the hands are also symbolic because they represent data of another nature, but learning to read it is clearly visual and results in the construction of a consistent mental image that practically all people share (as the image of the finger to the mouth to ask for silence, our response in shutting up is faster when people make this gesture to us than if they ask us in words in which we take a few seconds to process).

Internal and external reinforcements

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There are two ways of individual reinforcement for dogs:

  1. Internal, which makes the dog satisfied to be doing what he is doing, the behavior is its own reinforcement.
  2. External, which drives the behavior based on the expectation of getting something of interest (food, toy, etc).

The most interesting thing is that we now know that it is possible to make behaviors obtained by one type of individual reinforcement gradually become reinforced by the other.

This allows great advantages:

  1. For training where we can get a new behavior, learned with external reinforcements, it skips to become self-reinforcing with the benefits of greater efficiency in terms of reinforcements and pro-activity involved. Here I would give an example, but I think the Pere Saavedra video series «surrounded» by border collies is exemplary. The truth is that much of the new book I have «in the pipeline» focuses on how to achieve this and I will tell you in different entries.
  2. For behavioral correction, which is what I will focus on today, where the behavior that a dog does for fun (internal reinforcement) can be strengthened externally until it ceases to have any value of its own and is extinguished when leaving the external reinforcement program.

Here I will give you one very enlightening example that Pablo Roy, Head of sea lions at Madrid Zoo once told me: They had an orca who amused itself by ripping the silicone from the windows of the pool, which was a problem as it could break the enclosure. It was obvious that the orca was bored and they tried several measures to enrich its environment, but what it really thought was cool, was to rip silicone.

Working with orcas is very educational because you don’t get tempted to get angry with them or to punish them before considering alternatives (why is that?). What they did was use a continuous external reinforcement program: each time he took the silicone, he got a fish.

Were they crazy to reward it for bad behavior? Not far off, they were making a behavior which was self satisfactory and thus self-sustained, depend on external reinforcements. In addition to using continuous reinforcement we know that extinction while strengthening is faster: in a couple of months of work, the orca pulled out the silicone and came to ask for its reward, when they stopped giving it fish, the orca stopped ripping the silicone.

An alternative and different use of rewards to eliminate misconduct, we have tried many times with dogs and, if continuous reinforcement is achieved, it has ALWAYS came off. The owners flip and give you a wave.

The truth is to avoid being a «card» positive, I give positive work ideas. 😉

Starting a new training business among friends

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It is common for friends who share a love for training to make the move to the professional world by setting up a company of their own.

But these companies may end up as the rosary of dawn, ending in many cases not only the professional union but the previous friendship that united the partners. In the world of dog training, many have been through this unpleasant and emotionally draining situation.

However I think these arrangements can be successful with a set of rules that avoid most misunderstandings and disagreements.

Perhaps the main problem here is the level of involvement and the hours spent, often the availability of time (or inclination) of the different partners is different. This idea of «everyone do what they can,» which at first seems acceptable to all, ends up feeling like abuse by the more hard workers, who feel that they are doing the work of their peers and that the distribution of money is very unfair, with phrases like «you know that I cannot train in the evenings» do not help anything!

My proposal is to divide the work into categories depending on what is to be done, not many categories just two or three, for example: Office work, street work and long journeys. Then assign an hourly rate for each category, for example: five Euros/office hours, ten Euros/hour street work and twelve Euros/hour long trips. Each of the partners will get paid the hours worked and the (supposed) benefit will only be split once obtained after paying for the work of each worker.

In this model, it is very important to avoid assigning salaries according to technical difficulty, for example by giving a different price to the hours spent training than to the hours spent leafleting: both belong to the category «street work» and must be paid equally. This prevents some from feeling like subordinates of others, which is very common when not all members have the same level of technical skills.

I also recommend dividing at least a portion of the profits in proportion to working hours. This is important for companies that are set up with an initial investment close to zero Euros, although a partner does not charge for hours worked if they are to gain the benefits that, we hope, will be growing. To collect benefits, something must be invested: money or work, if not, rather than a partner, we have a parasite.

There should also be a minimum and maximum number of hours of work per week, the minimum makes us see if the members are really in the business or if they are just passengers. The maximum hours prevents people from overloading, with the mental exhaustion that this implies. If someone works to excess, s/he will be more inclined to think that s/he is the company, to feel that others do not take the project seriously…and this is not true in many cases, another partner really can work fewer hours but do them with enthusiasm and effectiveness. This is not a parasitic partner and it is not fair to take it out on him/her, it is not always the one who works most that is right in these discussions. If we set minimums and maximums, these problems radically reduce.

This model allows you to live everyday according to the phrase that my friend Cándido often repeated: «Clear accounts make for lasting friendships.»

Education vs. Training

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In some cases, dogs that compete in complex training disciplines with a high level of results are extremely awkward companions, it being very difficult to live with them, which relegates them to a life in kennels or other spaces outside the nuclear family. Why is this? Why would a dog that gets very high scores in complex obedience exercises not be well integrated into the social group in harmony? It is certainly true that in many of these individuals, a strong character and a very high level of activity is selected that make their management more complex.

But this, which is a good reason why these dogs give problems to novice owners, should not justify the fact that expert trainers who know, seek and prepare these dogs are not achieving normal coexistence for them.

The main reason for this situation is the confusion between learning and education, training typically uses learning processes (normally operant conditioning or cognitive processes) that make the dog motorize its behaviors based on motivations of a purely individual interest. Education is a different process that must be addressed from a different perspective.

Education is a special type of learning (or a combination of multiple types of learning) that aims to correct integration, maturity and effectiveness of individuals in their social group. You must therefore use affection, common goals and another series of characteristics needed in the balanced adult.

Education is especially important in altricial animals, as long childhoods mean a dependence on the mother and other members of the group for a relatively long period of time. Thus a training model that does not take into account the relationships of the puppy with his/her social group is not only less effective but very likely to lead to dysfunctional adults.

To achieve these objectives, education must meet a number of specific assumptions, knowledge of which is particularly interesting for us in order to know how to integrate the dog into our home environment as well as possible. Training and education must go hand in hand to obtain a social and manageable animal.

If the dog is bred in company- in addition to other people-, of social and well-behaved dogs, it allows free and prolonged interaction, it is likely that education is constructed correctly. Nevertheless, only dogs that come into contact with people during childhood may have some shortcomings, either through ignorance or through applying training ideas without sufficient ethological consistency.

Receiving discreet and graded signals

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Although my students of April 2008 onwards have this information in the updates to the book delivered in our courses, several people have told me that it is a largely unknown topic and it was worth making this «cut and paste» job; with my apologies to those who already know the text.

Dogs are animals capable of receiving discreet and graded signals about their environment and social group.

Discrete signals are on/off signals, they have different intensities or the intensity difference is irrelevant to the main message. They are usually related to the emergence of resources or dangers, so the clarity is the most important parameter, not receiving or misinterpreting a signal of this kind can have a serious economic or vital impact for the dog. Discrete signals are usually related to events of interest that are outside the social group.

Graded signals are those subject to variations in shape and/or intensity according to the emotional state of the issuer. They are the most used within the social group and allow interactive situations between two subjects. For this reason, they are the most important for coexistence.

Perhaps one of the most harmful effects on the education of the dogs that are derived from the vision of training as a sum of operative conditioning is «untraining» dogs to receive and evaluate the graded signals, the dog that limits itself to assessing the information coming from its social partners in black and white, will be an incompetent member of the group and will have difficulty establishing subtle relationships with its guide, it is taught to ignore signals not directly related to good or bad. What may be very beneficial at the beginning of training for its clarity, so that the dog learns new actions is not very useful when handling a trained dog, which is enriched with the nuances of the information that it receives from its guide.

To train it may be sufficient to use discrete signals, to educate we need the dog to enhance its nature to receive graded signals, as this will increase its ability to act properly in the family setting. Social mammals are particularly prepared for receiving and sending graded signals, as this allows an animal to know if their behavior is met with some joy, with some anger (or a lot) and to grade its social actions to which each individual in the group, in every situation, is receptive. So, the dog must learn to receive and send messages to the rest of the group with different levels.

Wellbeing or comfort behaviors

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Today we know that many animals, once their survival needs are covered, look to improve their wellbeing or comfort (Korttland 1940 makes the pursuit of comfort in animals explicit). The discovery of this characteristic showed us that the way of generating behavior -both social and individual-, and the learning of animals that have secure resources (food, water, resting place …) in sufficient quantity and quality and that also live in continually safe conditions is different from those without these guarantees. Thus we have the same species showing differences in their ethology as found in an ecological niche in the struggle for survival or pursuit of wellbeing.

There are a number of behaviors or movements that are indicators that a dog is in a state of wellbeing (Baerends 1960 coined the term «comfort movements»). The appearance of these behaviors on a frequent basis is an indicator of the quality of life and mental and emotional health of the dog, more reliable than the absence of signs of appeasement or the active pursuit of external reinforcements. Among the comfort or wellbeing behaviors of the dog are playing (social or individual), invitations to play, «wallowing» in the grass, resting upside down with the paws in the air, resting in open places instead of corners or closed places, seeking contact with the paws or nose, an «expansive» attitude, movement with jumps and sharp turns …. If these attitudes are continued and common, our dog will be in the optimal situation: its behavioral objectives will be intended mainly to «enjoy life» and not to fight for survival. Obviously a dog in a state of wellbeing will be able to enjoy training and living with us to a greater degree.

One of the characteristics of the comfort movements is that a large number of cases have no communicative purpose, a dog can wallow in grass without anyone watching it and of course when sleeping one way or another it makes no attempt to inform anyone of anything, of course if another dog or a person with knowledge sees it, they will know that it is happy and relaxed, respectively, but compared to behaviors of appeasement or aggression that are always made to transmit information to another individual, comfort movements do not necessarily have this informative objective, except in those cases where it wants to share its wellbeing by inviting us to play well!

Points to consider to satisfy a customer

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Sometimes good work is not positively valued, if we are offering a quality service but customers are not happy we have a problem. And it’s a big one.

Although it is common to hear commercial trainers complain about this, they almost never feel responsible: Because the training is good, they think it must be the fault of whoever cannot appreciate it. This assumption is often false, of course there are cases where this is true, but not often.

Customer satisfaction is the third key to commercial success (the other two are quality work and optimizing training), to achieve it remember the following things:

  1. Do not make deceptive advertising: A lot of the time in advertising we include everything that could bring in the customers and we do not stop to think about it later. The customer remembers and expects: If you do not do good work, do not say you do because it seems more commercial, however if you consider it best to leave a high percentage of failure rather than use negative techniques do not advertise 100% successful results. If you’re not really a specialist in a race, do not say you are. If what you say and what you do does not coincide, your customer will not be satisfied even if the training is good.
  2. Make it clear where you think the training will get to: Individuals often want their dogs to never fail, even if the heavens open and Troy burns down. This can not be achieved, if dogs did not fail there would be no training competitions as every participant would get a hundred points! Let the customer know where their dog can get to, and you must be clear about it, don’t respond with phrases like "we’ll see what happens", "I’ll do everything possible" … These ambiguities are often taken for fear of not being hired, you must be clear from the start. It is better to not hire us than to feel cheated.
  3. Make sure you know what the customer wants: Just because most people look for the same thing in training, do not assume that training is the same for everyone. Maybe the dog not coming into the kitchen while making dinner is more important than a perfect performance on the obstacle course. Take time to find out the priorities and objectives of each customer and before the end of training make sure you consider what has been achieved. It is better to give a couple of extra sessions than to leave a customer feeling like training has been interrupted.
  4. The dog must work with the customer, not with you: Perhaps the phrase that I hate listening to most as a trainer is "with me the dog was perfect, but from the beginning, I knew they would not obey them," Well if you knew it would not, don’t accept it! It is easy to forget that we do not charge for training the dog, but the owner(s)/dog team.
  5. Do not promise unnecessary things: One of the most frequent reasons for dissatisfaction is that the trainer says that "in a few days we will give an overview" or "see how it’s going," which arouses interest… and he doesn’t do it. When training is completed and there is work, it is easy to forget these things, which are often offered lightly. But the customer will have taken it as a commitment and if we don’t do it, the customer will feel that we have neglected them. Even though the dog has had exemplary training.
  6. Do not badmouth your competition: Sure you have arguments to defend your services without having to say how bad the others are, doing so gives a bad impression. We are also all in the same boat, let’s compete but let’s not fight.
  7. Be formal: Delays, cancellations of classes, changes of the agreed schedule… give the impression that "yes, they know a lot about dogs, but they’re not a serious person" Do not do any of the above unless it is unavoidable, feeling like a nap does not count as "inevitable"!
  8. Make it clear how much, how and when you charge: Being ambiguous in this raises susceptibility rapidly, and more as it is.
  9. Make sure you receive your money: Getting paid is not only important for eating every day and paying the mortgage, if someone does not pay you can be sure that they will speak badly about you to justify it. It can come to cause you a lot of damage, so avoiding it is a priority.

Learning and thinking through mental images (introduction)

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Unlike we humans, dogs do not have a linguistic code that allows them to mentally operate with symbols (words) that represent things. We must therefore assume that they operate with sensory mental imagery (uni-sensory or multi-sensory) of those things that they know or learn. This is what makes our work most difficult, their way of thinking is totally different to ours, only some mildly autistic people (e.g Temple Grandin) who have the inability to think with words can tell us what the mental experience of working with sensory images is like. We can take a lot about how dogs really think from their experiences.

Much of our extraordinary ease in thinking about complex things come from our ability to encode information in symbolic form and process these symbols in our heads instead of directly using mental images, to illustrate this I would like to give the reader a little exercise: mentally evoke the image of a person you know, do not think of their name just picture them, ok, now imagine that they are riding a horse, when it gets there imagine that this horse, with your friend in the saddle, is jumping a fence. Well, if you did the exercise you may have noticed that, as more elements were incorporated into your visualization, it was more and more difficult and the image was not all as accurate as it could have been. Now think of the name of your friend and mentally repeat the phrase: Fulanito riding a horse and jumping a hedge. This really has not taken much effort, as these images have become symbols, processing them is easy, fast and restful. Dogs operate in the first, more laborious way.

Handling symbols is a way to optimize the computing capacity of the brain, this is what makes computers so smart: with a binary combination of simple symbols (zeros and ones) they can perform a lot of very complex mental processes. Why does this happen?When you think of images your brain has to devote a lot of effort to build the image: You must put some kind of clothing on your friend, think of a color for the horse, the shape and arrangement of the hedge, even though I did not request any of this, you need to do it to build the image, however this effort is not necessary to symbolize it in words, we don’t need to know the clothes, the color of the horse or any other data except the minimum that I have asked: Fulanito riding a horse and jumping a hedge. Dogs do not have this ability to translate symbols, thereby minimizing the amount of information relevant to that time, so their thinking is slower and requires a significant amount of sensory memories.

How to optimize our commercial training sessions

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I see many commercial trainers that are just starting out (and some that take time in getting started) asking for extra trouble and work by not optimizing their sessions. Training is a very vocational profession and it is often those who dedicated themselves to it that tend to look for training only in the technical area, that is, how to teach the dog, however in commercial training, like in any professional field, you must have some optimization keys to avoid having to work more in situations we have created ourselves.

Of the three variables of commercial success: quality of work, customer satisfaction and optimizing time, I will focus this article on the last, how to optimize training time? Here are a few clues.

  1. Train the call from the first dayIf you train the call from the first day, you will see the potential problems that may arise beforehand and will be increasing the volume of work on the most important exercise training in commercial training.In my opinion this is a fundamental point, the call is often the most problematic command and it is usual to start initial training with the simplest actions (sit, down..) and teach the call after several sessions with the other actions. As a result we often have to extend the training to finish training the call, more sessions that we could have saved if from day one we had given it training time. We must invest in what matters – what dog doesn’t sit or lie down as bad as the training is?None!, but don’t spend too much time on it, go directly to the core.
  2. If something in particular does not come off, don’t get obsessedIf the training goes well and the dog gets stuck on something concrete, it is best to leave that action for a few days.One of the best ways to stretch good training to infinity and beyond is getting obsessed when we fail to make the dog perform the actions we have to teach it (perhaps the action that most happens with is lying down).This is where many trainers get concerned and focus the sessions on «solving the problem,» this is a serious mistake: you can make both you and the dog nervous, neither will think clearly, thus exacerbating the problem at each session, you can generate learning blocks in the dog (and you). Remember that the whole is stronger than its parts, if the dog sees clarity in teaching and achieves results it will be more willing to learn and perform other actions that are less easy or comfortable, at the end of the day during a successful training session the dog is learning to learn.
  3. Work on the dog’s concentration before the behaviorThe first thing you have to achieve is that the dog has a sufficient level of concentration in class, do whatever is necessary: take it to a quiet place, use a disruptive stimulus when it is distracted… but do not work an unfocused dog.When doing commercial training it is difficult to devote two or three full sessions to only teaching concentration and not behavior, it seems that you’re wasting your time and do not progress, this false perception is our enemy: if the dog is not focused, its learning is slower and lower in quality, it will be dependent on all the help that you give to get the behavior and will never try to achieve the action, training will become much longer for you with those two or three sessions and will be lower in quality. Believe me, everyone has gone through this error at first (and some have failed to overcome it.)
  4. Split the session into three partsDo not put forward a session of forty minutes or an hour, think of three sessions of ten to fifteen minutes separated by a few minutes break.You have to «squeeze» every session so that your expense of time does not end. We all know that the best training sessions are very short, ten or fifteen minutes, which is commercially viable (especially if you work at home), so most professionals opt for sessions of between half an hour and one hour of work, the problem is that these long sessions tend to work with the criteria and techniques used for optimal sessions (of ten or fifteen minutes), lengthening the sessions is possible in dogs that are used to working, but a dog that is brought to commercial training will never have that habit, so the results are concentration and quality loss in its behavior.You must put each session forward as the sum of three different sessions and with concrete objectives: The first part with all the actions you are teaching except the call, not having to do the calls will prevent the dog from running out of energy when coming (many dogs of customers do not have a suitable physical condition) and provide the concentration to be maintained within the area of social care. After this first part a short break and we dedicate the second part to the call, as the dog comes to assist us and already has it in mind to work with us it will be much easier, we use the technique we use and belong to the current training to which we belong. The third part is dedicated to stays (stay, go), the dog is more tired mentally and physically, so it’s a good time to make progress in this area. It seems easy and obvious, and it is.
  5. Control bodily aidsIdeally, it is the customer who trains their dog under our instructions, but if for any reason (training in residence, inability of the owner …) we are the ones who do it we have an added risk that can really drag out the work: bodily aids.It’s easy to help the dog without realizing it, by accompanying the movement we teach with our body, this is not a problem if we are aware of doing it in a precise moment in which the dog needs extra help progressing, but if it becomes something involuntary it can happen that the dog associates the action more with our movements than with the command. For almost any trainer with the minimum experience, it is easy to lead a dog with the body (in fact the problem is when you come to a test and do it involuntary), but these movements, so natural to the professional are imperceptible to the owner, who normally stands still like a stick repeating the command. Has it happened that you have to tell a customer «not like that, don’t be so rigid, does it help the dog out at all»?Because you’re spending more time than expected because of your poor planning: You have taught the dog bodily commands and now you have to teach them to the owner, or get rid of them in the dog, in any case: double work. Train without bodily aids (or keep them to a minimum and always remember that they are a scaffold which you must quickly remove) from the first day. If you already have the bad habit of doing them and you don’t notice them, record it on video and when you see it (it’s a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s worth it) note all the involuntary aids that you do and eliminate them. You’ll surely save three or four sessions.
  6. Properly evaluating the frequency of the sessionsOne of the most common reasons that make us need an excessive number of sessions is that they are too frequent or too infrequent.If you train the dog every day you’re not giving it time to consolidate the progress; you’re building on wet cement! Thus you will need more sessions for the same result, remember that learning is a complex process that restructures the dog on many levels, including neurologically. Have you never been to one of these intensive workshops when on the third day you can’t take in any more information? Well the same thing happens to dogs. But if you separate sessions too much, you will have to devote some of your time to regaining the level of the previous session so that you are also working double. Although every dog has its rhythm, three sessions a week is a safe bet to not overwork it.

Perros, preposiciones e intervenciones asistidas.

Publicado el 24 de febrero de 2015

El uso de CON o POR al hablar de Terapias o Intervenciones Asistidas POR/CON Perros está sometido a debate. En mi opinión debe usarse POR. Tengo tres motivos: 1 porque potencia la visión del perro como sujeto y no como objeto, 2 porque no le da más protagonismo del que tiene al estar vinculado a su labor de asistente de un profesional cualificado y 3 porque gramaticalmente es lo correcto.

Antropomorfismo, las medias verdades…

Publicado el 20 de febrero de 2015

El antropomorfismo es un sesgo muy conocido por los entrenadores caninos, que sin embargo no suelen conocer el sesgo opuesto, la objetualización. Conociendo solo uno de estos sesgos e intentando evitarlo es muy fácil caer en el otro. La incidencia en los peligros del antropomorfismo sin dar igual importancia a los de la objetualización puede llevar a que se objetualice a los perros de manera sistemática.

NatuKa, la felicidad.

Publicado el 24 de diciembre de 2014

Acaba de ponerse a la venta NatuKa que, en mi opinión, es la alimentación preparada para perros y gatos de mayor calidad del mercado. Es comida cruda con todos sus componentes procedentes de ganadería y agricultura ecológica, se sirve congelada y permite reconocer perfectamente la procedencia y calidad de sus componentes.

Acertar al equivocarse: uso correcto de los errores en la didáctica.

Publicado el 12 de diciembre de 2014

El uso estratégico de los errores consigue un aprendizaje más rápido y consistente que el aprendizaje sin fallos, pero no es sencillo hacerlo correctamente. Existen tres premisas que facilitan que la gestión de los errores se convierta en un recurso didáctico: introducir los errores tras una fase de aprendizaje exitoso, informar al aprendiz del error y usarlos en situaciones principalmente prospectivas.

Seminario «El perro social», de Juliane Kaminski. The future is now!

Publicado el 25 de noviembre de 2014

El seminario EL PERRO SOCIAL de Juliane Kaminski en el ITE ha traído una avalancha de nuevos conocimientos sobre la domesticación de los perros, la selección de las razas, las relaciones de jerarquía entre perros, la importancia de sus expresiones faciales y sobre sus capacidades cognitivas… Es consecuente e inevitable un cambio de paradigma en la manera de entenderlos y plantear nuestra relación con ellos.

Tu perro piensa y te quiere obtiene su “certificado de buena ciencia”.

Publicado el 6 de noviembre de 2014

Se acaba de publicar una reseña sobre «Tu perro piensa y te quiere» en la revista científica Ciencia Cognitiva. Al haber superado el proceso de revisión por pares se considera que lo que se expone en el texto es consistente científicamente. Es el primer libro escrito en castellano sobre entrenamiento canino que logra este reconocimiento, este «certificado de buena ciencia».

Javier Boracchia: El Perro Urbano.

Publicado el 23 de octubre de 2014

El entrenador argentino Javier Boracchia, director de El Perro Urbano, ha desarrollado un acercamiento al entrenamiento y gestión del comportamiento canino novedoso basándose en conceptos de psicología social. Su abordaje entiende a la familia y su perro como un sistema cuyo funcionamiento se debe regular, en lugar de centrarse en los comportamientos individuales del perro y de las personas que viven con él.

Se llamaba Excálibur

Publicado el 16 de octubre de 2014

Mi crítica hacia la muerte de Excálibur ha llevado a varias personas a criticarme por la excesiva preocupación por «un perro» y por dar demasiada importancia a un problema «menor» entre los muchos que tiene este mundo. Pero no era sólo un perro, tenía nombre, como lo tenemos cada uno de nosotros, se llamaba Excálibur y su vida era única, como lo es cada una de las nuestras. Además la solidaridad no se gasta por su uso: más das, más queda. Sentir la injusticia que ha matado a Excálibur nos hace mejores y nos ayuda a empalizar mejor con todas las víctimas, con quienes son abusados, sean humanos o no.

Es necesario recordar a Excálibur

Publicado el 10 de octubre de 2014

La injusta muerte de Excálibur debe ser recordado, pero no a través de homenajes o palabras, debe ser tomado en cuenta a la hora de votar. Que es la forma que tenemos de hacer justicia con quienes lo han matado.

Algunos problemas que se han instalado en la Terapia Asistida por Perros.

Publicado el 2 de octubre de 2014

En la formación de los Técnicos de Terapia Asistida por Perros (TTAP) y consecuentemente en la Terapia Asistida por Perros (TAP) se están generalizando algunos problemas serios: modelos de trabajo generadores de discriminación, atribución de responsabilidades excesivas a los TTAP y falta de supervisión y evaluación objetiva de los resultados por parte de especialistas. En muchos casos estas malas prácticas se adoptan de buena fe por parte de quienes empiezan al aprenderlas y verlas realizadas por entidades significativas.

Instituto Tecnológico EDUCAN: Tú puedes ser parte del cambio. El futuro empieza ahora.

Publicado el 8 de septiembre de 2014

La ciencia del comportamiento que estudia a los perros ofrece nuevos conocimientos que deben usarse para cambiar los protocolos de entrenamiento. Es labor de los entrenadores desarrollar aplicaciones prácticas innovadoras que aprovechen lo que se está descubriendo. Para hacerlo debemos formarnos de tal manera que no solo aprendamos técnicas, sino los nuevos conceptos básicos sobre cómo aprenden y se relacionan con nosotros nuestros amigos de cuatro patas.

Hábitos: Una pequeña guía para saber cómo funcionan y cómo trabajarlos

Publicado el 1 de septiembre de 2014

Los hábitos son conductas que por su éxito repetido se activan de manera menos consciente que las conductas novedosas, sin embargo en muchos casos los entrenadores tendemos a trabajar para cambiarlos con normas sencillas de aprendizaje asociativo que no funcionan con los hábitos. Este post explica las características de los hábitos, su funcionamiento y cómo trabajar sobre ellos de manera sencilla, respetuosa y eficaz.

Adiestramiento cognitivo-emocional: Sin revelación no hay revolución

Publicado el 23 de agosto de 2014

El adiestramiento cognitivo-emocional hace que el perro trabaje en base a su relación afectiva con su entrenador, disfrutando del trabajo y de la comunicación y conexión entre ellos. Aunque uno conozca el concepto no es hasta el momento de sentirlo con tu perro que todo «encaja» y no tiene sentido seguir usando modelos obsoletos para entrenarle.

EDUCAN y Dognition: hacia una nueva tecnología (cognitiva, of course) del comportamiento.

Publicado el 4 de julio de 2014

EDUCAN desarrolla tecnología del comportamiento destinada al entrenamiento y la educación canina desde criterios cognitivos, Dognition desarrolla tecnología de evaluación de las capacidades cognitivas individuales de cada perro. Estos dos objetivos se complementan a la perfección y ambas empresas hemos decidido colaborar para desarrollar una nueva tecnología del comportamiento canino basada en los conocimientos actuales sobre las capacidades cognitivas, individuales y sociales, de los perros.

¿Vender arena en el desierto? Cómo hacer y cómo NO hacer una campaña de publicidad en Facebook.

Publicado el 11 de junio de 2014

El éxito de las campañas publicitarias en Facebook está en tener un producto o servicio de calidad, que la promoción sea proporcionada en tamaño y características al producto, que los textos publicitarios estén argumentados y conseguir hacerse viral sin resultar invasivo.

¡Yo he venido a hablar de mi libro!

Publicado el 3 de junio de 2014

Todos los datos para apuntarse a la fiesta de presentación de «Tu perro piensa y te quiere», con descuentos en la compra del libro para los asistentes virtuales y presenciales. Además una «Edición Especial Tu perro piensa y te quiere» de nuestro curso para entrenadores, con contenidos adicionales únicos. Y pos si fuera poco un concurso de Facebook para todo eso te pueda salir «gratis total».

EDUCAN, Bocalán y los parecidos razonables. Las cosas no son tan graves :-)

Publicado el 29 de mayo de 2014

Tengo la ocasión de decir abiertamente que un texto de Bocalán me parece impecable, perfecto: es claro, es sensible con las necesidades de la gente y está redactado con estilo. Por desgracia, tengo que hacer notar que dicho texto es un plagio de uno mío 😉

Tu perro piensa y te quiere: La introducción de Josep Call al libro y alguna cosilla más.

Publicado el 26 de mayo de 2014

Introducción a mi libro de próxima aparición «Tu perro piensa y te quiere. Entrenar perros no es como te lo habían contado» de Josep Call, Catedrático sobre los Orígenes Evolutivos de la Mente de la Universidad de St Andrews.

Grandes novedades para EDUCANEROS y entrenadores cognitivos en general.

Publicado el 19 de mayo de 2014

El 28 de Junio se presentará mi nuevo libro, Tu perro piensa y te quiere. Entrenar perros no es como te lo habían contado. Como consecuencia cambiarán los temarios de los cursos impartidos por EDUCAN, además vamos a aprovechar esta innovación para iniciar nuestra actividad formativa en Buenos Aires y en Santiago de Chile.

Pepperberg, Call y ahora Udell… 2014, el año cognitivo.

Publicado el 15 de mayo de 2014

En este año 2014 están llegando una gran cantidad de conocimientos de calidad sobre las capacidades cognitivas de los perros y su aplicación al entrenamiento, permitiendo que cale una manera de entender y trabajar a los perros que va más allá del aprendizaje asociativo.

EDUCAN, los certificados de profesionalidad estatales, los perros de asistencia y el Reishiki.

Publicado el 10 de abril de 2014

EDUCAN ha sido la primera escuela de adiestradores de la CAM que puede emitir directamente el Certificado de Profesionalidad Oficial del Estado Español de Instructor de Perros de Asistencia.

Esto es un mérito importante para EDUCAN, puesto que las condiciones son exigentes y las evalúa el estado. No es un mero trámite administrativo, sino un elemento objetivo de valoración y reconocimiento de la calidad.

Además de todo ello, la formación de entrenadores de perros de asistencia son temas que no están exentos de problemas profundos, estructurales en muchos casos, que conviene exponer con claridad

Señales, comandos y una cierta falta de sentido crítico.

Publicado el 19 de marzo de 2014

El término «señal» es un término conductista que se refiere a un estímulo que marca el momento en el que una conducta será valiosa, el término «comando» pertenece a la programación y a la cognición y es un estímulo que activa un proceso. Aunque ambos son términos científicos se ha asociado incorrecta y tendenciosamente «comando» con la jerga paramilitar. Esto parece una estrategia para dar peso a una nomenclatura científica descalificando sin argumentar a la otra.

Dios está en los detalles (II): Conseguir una llamada eficaz y consistente.

Publicado el 26 de febrero de 2014

La llamada es el ejercicio más relevante para la tenencia responsable y para la calidad de vida de un perro. Para conseguir una llamada consistente en situaciones reales debemos reforzarla a través de actividades favoritas, entrenarla con activaciones emocionales altas, hacer que localizar y llegar hasta el guía sea difícil pero divertido para el perro y conseguir que la posición de llegada sea clara y favorezca la estabilidad y el autocontrol del perro. Aún así debemos ser tolerantes con los fallos ocasionales.

Algunas precauciones y premisas para usar refuerzo negativo minimizando sus riesgos.

Publicado el 12 de febrero de 2014

Las propuestas de trabajo para perros emocionalmente problemáticos que se basan en la gestión conductual de aversivos: tanto BAT como CAT son protocolos que funcionan a través del refuerzo negativo, al que se le puede añadir eventualmente un refuerzo positivo. De primeras aclaro que creo que este es el camino adecuado, hoy sabemos que el uso del refuerzo negativo en un programa de refuerzo diferencial es lo más eficaz para este tipo de problema.

El mayor riesgo con el que nos encontramos tiene que ver con una eventualidad que parecemos no considerar cuando trabajamos: el comportamiento es continuo, no una suma de eventos aislados. En la mayoría de los casos el perro, durante la sesión, podrá reducir la intensidad del estímulo aversivo hasta hacerlo desaparecer con su conducta. Típicamente al dejar de mostrar una respuesta de agresión o miedo hacia otro perro (que es el estímulo aversivo en estos casos) o realizar alguna otra conducta observable que consideremos correcta alejará al otro perro (CAT) o se alejará de él (BAT y nuestro protocolo). Esto es muy adecuado al paradigma de refuerzo negativo, pero parecemos olvidar que antes de retirar o alejar el aversivo tenemos que introducirlo en la vida del perro, o sea que tenemos que sumar un estímulo aversivo (el otro perro) al entorno para poder empezar la sesión. Y sumar un estímulo aversivo al entorno es la manera de iniciar los trabajos de castigo positivo, el tipo de condicionamiento con efectos emocionales y conductuales más lesivos.

Primer trimestre de 2014 en el Instituto EDUCAN: Altos vuelos.

Publicado el 13 de noviembre de 2013

Los próximos seminarios del Instituto EDUCAN serán sobre la gestión de empresas de educación canina, impartido por mí, sobre obediencia deportiva con CoachinDog, un sistema de base conceptual C-E, impartido por Juan Carlos Moreda, y, nuestro plato fuerte, sobre el entrenamiento como herramienta para investigar la cognición animal impartido por: ¡¡Irene Pepperberg!!

Dios está en los detalles (I): Formas sencillas de facilitar y mejorar el entrenamiento de la permanencia en adiestramientos de manejo.

Publicado el 5 de noviembre de 2013

Es muy sencillo y rentable a nivel emocional y práctico facilitar el entrenamiento para permanecer quietos en los perros de manejo. En este artículo se exponen algunas propuestas formales y conceptuales para lograrlo.

¿Formación? Mucho bueno amigo.

Publicado el 16 de octubre de 2013

Aunque EDUCAN y Bocalán son las entidades formativas más grandes, antiguas y reconocidas de España existe una gran oferta formativa de calidad ofrecida por entidades nuevas o más pequeñas, en este post recomiendo algunas opciones formativas muy interesantes en mi opinión.

La aventura formativa.

Publicado el 25 de septiembre de 2013

Casi sin notarlo estructurar, diseñar e impartir formación para adiestradores y especialistas en comportamiento canino se ha convertido en la gran aventura de mi vida.

Enfadarse con los perros, usar aversivos y las hermosas palabras.

Publicado el 2 de septiembre de 2013

La propuesta de adiestramiento C-E propone el enfado controlado con el perro, el uso de aversivos suaves como parte de su educación y utilizar determinadas formas de refuerzo negativo diferencial para solucionar problemas emocionales. Aunque resulta chocante al leerlo, la realidad práctica es que son recursos eficaces frecuentemente utilizados a los que se evita nombrar directamente o a los que se les dan denominaciones más estéticas a través del uso de eufemismos.

¿Adiestrar? Está bien, negociemos.

Publicado el 20 de agosto de 2013

El adiestramiento y la modificación del comportamiento en perros necesita incorporar conocimientos científicos consistentes sobre comportamiento, conducta, etología… pero esto no es suficiente. En mi opinión es necesario incorporar conceptos de didáctica, una dinámica de negociación y la valoración ponderada del profesional para ofrecer resultados eficaces en el trabajo práctico.

El «arte» de adiestrar.

Publicado el 1 de agosto de 2013

El concepto «arte de adiestrar» es mirado con desconfianza desde la visión más científica del adiestramiento, sin embargo, en su justa medida, es una ayuda para individualizar nuestros protocolos para cada perro que entrenamos, ayudándonos a mantener la modestia y humildad necesarias para adaptarnos a su personalidad y necesidades concretas. Esto llevará nuestros resultados y el disfrute del entrenamiento a otro nivel, tanto para el perro como para el adiestrador.

Mi próxima visita a Buenos Aires.

Publicado el 16 de junio de 2013

En Septiembre viajaré a Argentina, a Buenos Aires, para impartir dos seminarios. El primero sobre los protocolos actuales del adiestramiento cognitivo-emocional, el segundo a la gestión emocional aplicada a la modificación de conductas problemáticas y a la búsqueda del bienestar en los perros.

Barato y eficaz: Mejorar las líneas de comunicación con los clientes.

Publicado el 3 de junio de 2013

Una de las medidas más seguras, baratas y eficaces que puede tomar un empresa de adiestramiento y gestión de la canina para mejorar su facturación es mejorar su manera de comunicarse con quienes les consultan sobre sus servicios, con unos sencillos ajustes en cuatro puntos aumentaremos el porcentaje entre quienes nos contactan y quienes terminan contratándonos.

Un modelo de capitalismo sostenible.

Publicado el 14 de mayo de 2013

Para que un sistema competitivo sea saludable para las personas es necesario asumir el compromiso de actuar de manera sostenible en la actividad empresarial, evitando la especulación, la explotación y la picaresca.

Nueva línea de formación en EDUCAN.

Publicado el 29 de abril de 2013

Debido a las dificultades que implica la actual crisis económica, en EDUCAN creemos que se hace necesario abrir una línea formativa que ayude a quienes deseen profesionalizar su trabajo con perros para que puedan llevarlo a cabo de manera eficaz, rentable y ética.

Los perros nos quieren.

Publicado el 18 de abril de 2013

Los perros muestran una relación afectiva con las personas extraordinaria y maravillosa que no debemos ignorar o relativizar por acercarnos a su conocimiento y estudio desde una óptica científica y realista.

Volvernos empresarios en tiempos revueltos.

Publicado el 12 de abril de 2013

Es necesario que los adiestradores profesionales mejoren su cualificación como empresarios para mantenerse en un mercado en crisis, esto puede hacerse tomando una serie de medidas que nos faciliten mantener la calidad ética y técnica del servicio y no demonizar a la competencia.

No nos volvamos locos.

Publicado el 1 de abril de 2013

La importancia del afecto y la activación social del perro durante el entrenamiento está empezando a asentarse como premisa para un adiestramiento de calidad, sin embargo se está descalificando a los adiestradores que no lo utilizan o que no consiguen los resultados emocionales deseados. Esto es algo normal inicialmente y no debe usarse para desanimar o minusvalorar quienes tienen dificultades para conseguirlo.

Desmontando el JUNTO.

Publicado el 11 de febrero de 2013

El ejercicio de junto es el que permite mayor coordinación y complicidad entre el perro y su guía, sin embargo incluirlo en los adiestramientos comerciales resulta innecesario e incluso inconveniente.

Enseñar con red.

Publicado el 30 de enero de 2013

Cuando se desea experimentar con nuevas técnicas o conceptos en el entrenamiento de perros hay riesgos serios, puesto que el perro no puede diferenciar una sesión de entrenamiento «de prueba» de una normal. Pero innovar y avanzar es necesario, para hacerlo debemos tener protocolos que permitan introducir novedades manteniendo el riesgo formativo a un nivel mínimo.

La única premisa.

Publicado el 17 de enero de 2013

Quienes creemos que la ciencia es la luz que nos muestra el camino para avanzar, siempre de la necesaria mano de la ética para sostener y calentar su linterna poderosa pero fría, somos una fraternidad, otra cosa es que, como todos los hermanos, discutamos ferozmente para defender nuestra perspectiva y nuestra apuesta por un modelo u otro de entrenamiento, esto no quita ni una pizca del respeto y cercanía que siento por todos los que comparten esta visión del entrenamiento, por lejos que estemos en nuestras posturas compartimos una misma idea de fondo, cuando, discutiendo, decimos “mi ciencia es más moderna o mejor o más probada” estamos diciendo en realidad que aceptamos una misma premisa: el adiestramiento de animales debe basarse en conocimientos consistentes y los protocolos de entrenamiento han de ser reproducibles para ser de calidad. Y eso es lo que yo escucho.

La importancia de la comunicación.

Publicado el 16 de octubre de 2012

El adiestramiento implica la comunicación exitosa entre el adiestrador y el perro, para conseguirla se requieren dos premisas: el interés de las partes por comunicarse y la existencia de un canal que permita la transmisión de la información. Cuando estas premisas no se cumplen de manera suficiente es frecuente la aparición de dos problemas: el colapso informativo y la aparición de frustración.
El adiestramiento C-E propone construir la vinculación y la comunicación con el perro de manera previa al inicio de la enseñanza de conductas.

La Caja Verde: ¡Nau in inglis! (The Green Box)

Publicado el 3 de octubre de 2012

Debido al interés de algunos angloparlantes hemos decidido traducir este blog, ya hay varias entradas disponibles en inglés e iremos traduciéndolas todas progresivamente.

Adicción: El riesgo invisible.

Publicado el 12 de septiembre de 2012

Los perros seleccionados para el trabajo tienen una alta motivación hacia algunas conductas, lo que puede ser potenciado por nuestra manera de entrenar generándole una insana adicción a juguetes como la pelota o el mordedor, la manga de protección, la pista de agility… Esto puede evitarse sin mermar los resultados siguiendo unas sencillas pautas.

Dile sí al «no»: La importancia de entrenar la inhibición.

Publicado el 1 de septiembre de 2012

El «no» informativo sirve para entrenar en el perro la capacidad cognitiva de la inhibición, necesaria para que el perro desarrolle sus capacidades sociales y emocionales de manera adecuada, una vez enseñado será una indicación del guía para que interrumpa una conducta y debe entrenarse de manera que genere un tono emocional positivo en el perro.

Lluvia de albóndigas.

Publicado el 29 de mayo de 2012

La extinción es un proceso difícil y arriesgado de aplicar para ajustar ejercicios que son correctos en su conjunto, pero muestran algún pequeño desajuste. La distribución aleatoria de premios es una alternativa para conseguirlo fácil y segura.

El antropomorfismo, ese pretendido mal…

Publicado el 28 de mayo de 2012

En el mundo del perro se arroja la acusación de antropomorfismo como la máxima expresión de ignorancia sentimentaloide, quien cae dicho pecado es el último eslabón de la incompetencia. Esa visión ha hecho mucho daño al avance de la etología –que ya lo va superando- y al del adiestramiento, limitando nuestra manera de entender a los animales y nuestras explicaciones y análisis de su comportamiento.

Espejo, espejito…

Publicado el 7 de mayo de 2012

Hoy día podemos inferir la existencia de neuronas espejo en los perros por los experimentos que demuestran su capacidad de aprendizaje por imitación y empatía, pero será necesario para confirmarlo la observación de la actividad cerebral a través de técnicas de neuroimagen.

Qué es un buen negocio.

Publicado el 3 de mayo de 2012

Los buenos negocios son aquellos en los que todas las partes ganan. No se debe pensar que la obtención de beneficios implica que alguien «perderá» lo que el otro gana.

«Do as I Do» (hazlo como yo).

Publicado el 24 de abril de 2012

La adiestradora Claudia Fugazza ha desarrollado un método de adiestramiento canino que utiliza la compleja capacidad cognitiva y social de la imitación, así el perro puede aprender imitando a su guía humano. Ha denominado a este sistema «Do as I do» (hazlo como yo).

Generalidades de nuestra propuesta de entrenamiento para zoos y acuarios.

Publicado el 2 de abril de 2012

Desde EDUCAN creemos que se puede mejorar la calidad de vida global de los animales alojados en zoos y acuarios cambiando los parámetros más conductistas de entrenamiento por otros cognitivo-emocionales. La potenciación del valor intrínseco de las conductas de bienestar, el aprovechamiento del afecto para mejorar las interacciones entre grupos de animales sociales y las medidas para mejorar la gestión del estrés son sólo la punta del iceberg de nuestra propuesta.

My sea lion is rich and the dolphin is in the kitchen.

Publicado el 22 de marzo de 2012

Resumen, en castellano, de la presentación de nuestro trabajo de entrenamiento cognitivo-emocional en leones marinos, explicando los resultados y mejoras obtenidas con respecto al uso de un modelo de entrenamiento basado exclusivamente en el uso de porcesos de condicionamiento operante.

El conocimiento estéril.

Publicado el 21 de febrero de 2012

El uso correcto del conocimiento en el entrenamiento es para el avance y mejora de técnicas y protocolos, no como arma arrojadiza en debates estériles y sectarios cuyo único fin es captar adeptos para una u otra tendencia de adiestramiento y descalificar a aquellos que militan en otras.

40th Annual Symposium of the European Association for Aquatic Mammals: “Más alla del condicionamiento operante…”.

Publicado el 7 de febrero de 2012

Abstract, en inglés y castellano, de la presentación oral que haré en el cuadragésimo simposio de la «European Association for Aquatic Mammals» sobre la metodología y resultados de nuestro trabajo aplicando un modelo de entrenamiento cognitivo-emocional en los leones marinos del Zoo de Madrid.

El curso EDUCAN de Asistente a la Atención Clínica Veterinaria (ATV)

Publicado el 30 de enero de 2012

EDUCAN ha añadido a su oferta formativa un curso de Asistente a la Atención Clínica Veterinaria, ATV, con un sistema de prácticas en talleres monográficos que hace diestros a los alumnos con un tiempo formativo menor que los sistemas tradicionales. Además este curso cubre dos de los módulos formativos necesarios para obtener la certificación profesional como adiestrador e instructor canino.

Importancia de los oteaderos para la calidad de vida del gato doméstico.

Publicado el 28 de diciembre de 2011

Los oteaderos son puntos elevados que los gatos usan para sentirse seguros y evaluar su entorno. Su ausencia limitará su calidad de vida y puede ser el inicio de severos problemas de conducta.

Corazón de león (marino, of course)

Publicado el 14 de diciembre de 2011

En el contexto del trabajo que EDUCAN está haciendo con el Zoo de Madrid para cambiar sus métodos de entrenamiento conductistas por un trabajo cognitivo-emocional ayer conserguimos que uno de los leones marinos llegara al punto final del trabajo: El uso del auto-refuerzo y de su relación afectiva con el entrenador como únicos reforzadores, eliminando por completo los refuerzos primarios, condicionados y su expectativa.

Mamá, quiero ser adiestrador.

Publicado el 16 de noviembre de 2011

El adiestramiento y trabajo sobre la conducta de los perros es un sector en crecimiento, pese a ello la decisión de dedicarnos profesionalmente a ello provoca reacciones de alarma y preocupación en nuestro entorno. No debería ser así.

Cualificaciones profesionales (II): Algunas ventajas, algunos fraudes y el espinoso tema de las autonomías

Publicado el 25 de octubre de 2011

La posibilidad, ya cercana, de que los profesionales del adiestramiento de perros se acrediten mediante Certificados de Profesionalidad de validez Europea traerá muchas ventajas, pero también ha surgido una picaresca alrededor que puede hacernos gastar mucho dinero de manera inútil.

Cualificaciones profesionales referidas al entrenamiento de perros (I): Una visión general

Publicado el 12 de octubre de 2011

Se acaban de aprobar tres cualificaciones profesionales que se refieren al ámbito del entrenamiento y la modificación de conducta canina. Esto ha causado interés en el sector, lamentablemente se está publicando mucha información sesgada o simplemente falsa. Este artículo aporta una visión general y real sobre cómo nos afecta este hecho a los profesionales y futuros profesionales del adiestramiento.

Artículos para «Pelo, pico, pata»: Usando la nariz.

Publicado el 26 de septiembre de 2011

Hacer que nuestro perro use su olfato es una gran herramienta terapéutica en corrección de conducta, recuperadora en perros geriátricos y lúdica para todos ellos y sus propietarios

La concentración relajada

Publicado el 19 de septiembre de 2011

Habitualmente se enseña a los perros a concentrarse para trabajar de manera que implica tensión y altos niveles de estrés, lo que puede afectar a su calidad de vida en el largo plazo. La alternativa es enseñar al perro a concentrase de manera relajada, lo que permitirá que entrene y trabaje toda su vida disfrutando de ello y evitando la acumulación de estrés residual.

Producto, publicidad y atención a potenciales clientes

Publicado el 3 de septiembre de 2011

Para poder tener éxito profesional como adiestrador es necesario un buen producto, pero también publicidad que lo presente a sus potenciales consumidores y una adecuada atención a quienes se interesan en nuestros servicios.

Banco de pruebas: Thundershirt

Publicado el 22 de junio de 2011

El Thundershirt es una “camiseta” de tela que puede ser regulada para apretar el cuerpo del perro, generando una presión uniforme. El objetivo es aprovechar el mismo proceso que usa la máquina de abrazar vacas diseñada por Temple Grandin: la tranquilidad inducida por una sujeción firme pero suave. Este es un proceso que debería tenerse en cuenta a la hora de diseñar y opinar sobre técnicas de modelado, pues ahora sabemos que podrían realizarse de manera que generasen calma y tuvieran importantes efectos positivos sobre los perros para ayudarles en la superación de miedos y eliminación de estrés.

Protocolos de adiestramiento C-E (II): Estructuras de adiestramiento

Publicado el 25 de mayo de 2011

La correcta enseñanza de estructuras de adiestramiento, previa a la búsqueda de las conductas que sean el objetivo final de cada adiestramiento, y su uso posterior para conseguir estas conductas son uno de los protocolos de trabajo más importantes de la nueva propuesta de entrenamiento Cognitivo-Emocional.

Artículos para «Pelo, pico, pata»: ¿Qué es el adiestramiento cognitivo-emocional?

Publicado el 6 de mayo de 2011

Un acercamiento sencillo al adiestramiento cognitivo-emocional publicado previamente en la revista «Pelo, pico, pata».

Protocolos de adiestramiento C-E (I): Espacios de aprendizaje

Publicado el 23 de abril de 2011

Uno de los nuevos protocolos de adiestramiento Cognitivo-Emocional es la enseñanza y uso de espacios de aprendizaje, aulas mentales que ponen al perro en la mejor disposición para aprender antes de iniciar el proceso de enseñanza de las conductas que deseamos adiestrar.

Artículos para «Pelo, pico, pata»: La educación en los perros jóvenes

Publicado el 15 de marzo de 2011

La adolescencia canina puede resultar un momento problemático si no se sabe afrontar, sin embargo conociendo cómo trabajar con el perro joven podemos ayudarle a superarla de manera divertida y educativa.

Algunas ventajas emocionales del entrenamiento de la propiocepción y el equilibrio.

Publicado el 25 de febrero de 2011

El entrenamiento de la propiocepción y el equilibrio puede ser aprovechado para mejorar problemas de miedo, de reactividad, asociaciones emocionales exageradas y, en general, para mejorar la gestión emocional y el autocontrol en perro y otros animales.

Beneficios y aplicaciones de los targets dinámicos en el entrenamiento de perros

Publicado el 8 de febrero de 2011

Para entrenamiento en los que la velocidad y la precisión son muy relevantes los targets dinámicos aportan una importante serie de ventajas con respecto a los targets estáticos.

«The Power of Love»

Publicado el 2 de febrero de 2011

Romeo y Rumbo, dos jóvenes delfines, con su conducta permitieron que se reconociera claramente la importancia de balancear estímulos individuales con afecto durante el entrenamiento

Convenio de colaboración entre EDUCAN y la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Publicado el 14 de enero de 2011

La Facultad de Psicología de la Universidad Autónoma de Madrid ha firmado un convenio de colaboración con EDUCAN para que sus alumnos puedan realizar el Practicum de su licenciatura de psicología con nosotros.

La gestión del tiempo en las empresas de adiestramiento comercial (y II)

Publicado el 9 de diciembre de 2010

Segunda parte de las propuestas que me han sido eficaces para aprovechar bien el tiempo en una empresa de adiestramiento comercial, con particular énfasis en las que nos permiten adaptarnos bien a las características «particulares» del adiestramiento comercial.

El curso EDUCAN de Técnico en Terapia Asistida por Perros (TTAP)

Publicado el 1 de diciembre de 2010

Explicación de las diferencias del modelo formativo de EDUCAN para el curso de Técnico en Terapia Asistida por Perros con otros modelos formativos para esta misma especialidad.

La gestión del tiempo en las empresas de adiestramiento comercial (I)

Publicado el 9 de noviembre de 2010

Las empresas de adiestramiento comercial se caracterizan por ser empresas pequeñas, en muchos casos unipersonales, donde la necesidad de realizar múltiples tareas resulta una dificultad para organizarse eficazmente. Aprender a gestionar el tiempo nos ayudará a no ahogarnos en la multi-tarea ni dejar de progresar como empresa ni como profesionales.

Diez cosas que NO debe hacer un adiestrador (EMO)

Publicado el 20 de octubre de 2010

Un decálogo de errores frecuentes en los adiestradores que conviene aprender a evitar.

Un día en el Zoo…

Publicado el 6 de octubre de 2010

Hemos empezado la segunda fase de nuestro proyecto con Zoos Ibéricos de entrenamiento cognitivo-emocional multiespecie: la formación de sus entrenadores en este modelo de adiestramiento.

La importancia de las emociones dentro del grupo social (y IV): La entropía y su importancia en el comportamiento del perro doméstico

Publicado el 30 de septiembre de 2010

La entropía es un proceso muy relevante en los perros domésticos, explicando consistentemente muchos de sus comportamientos durante la convivencia.

La importancia de las emociones dentro del grupo social (III): La simpatía

Publicado el 8 de septiembre de 2010

La simpatía es la capacidad de contagiarse de la emoción de otro individuo al percibirla, buscando compartirla si es positiva o menorarla si es negativa. Esta capacidad es la base del comportamiento altruista y está demostrada en varios mamíferos sociales, en el perro no ha sido evaluada.

La importancia de las emociones dentro del grupo social (II): La sincronía

Publicado el 24 de agosto de 2010

La sincronía es la capacidad de muchos animales de activar estados emocionales y las conductas derivadas de dichos estados emocionales de forma coordinada con el resto de su grupo social. Esto puede ser aprovechado en adiestramiento.

La importancia de las emociones dentro del grupo social (I): La empatía

Publicado el 16 de agosto de 2010

La empatía es la capacidad de percibir y reconocer los estados emocionales de otros individuos, es una de las capacidades que permiten que los mamíferos sociales convivan y colaboren, por ello es necesario tomar este fenómeno en cuenta para el adiestramiento de perros.

Algunas ideas sobre cómo afrontar la crisis cuando se tiene una empresa de adiestramiento

Publicado el 25 de mayo de 2010

La crisis económica puede darnos la oportunidad de crecer como empresa y destacarnos en el mercado si seguimos unos protocolos más consistentes que los de la competencia.

Sobre lobos y perros.

Publicado el 23 de abril de 2010

La relación y afinidades o diferencias entre lobos y perros son un tema de discusión recurrente entre adiestradores, este artículo intenta aportar los datos científicos más actuales sobre la cuestión.

Beneficios del estrés (II)

Publicado el 9 de abril de 2010

La correcta gestión del estrés es necesaria para el adiestramiento y la corrección de conducta. Una manera fácil y segura de empezar el entreno de la gestión del estrés es utilizar «simuladores» del estrés.

Beneficios del estrés (I)

Publicado el 1 de abril de 2010

Además de los problemas que puede causar el estrés, bien gestionado, puede aportarnos importantes beneficios para al adiestramiento y la calidad de vida de nuestros perros.

Otra vuelta de tuerca al castigo negativo.

Publicado el 12 de marzo de 2010

El castigo negativo es una eficaz forma de eliminar conductas operantes inadecuadas, este artículo propone varias técnicas para usarlo que son poco conocidas.

Sobre el luring.

Publicado el 1 de marzo de 2010

El luring es una estructura de enseñanza-aprendizaje en positivo que actualmente está muy cuestionada, analizarla nos permitirá saber las ventajas y problemas que tiene su aplicación.

Perros y ahora también leones marinos, loros y delfines

Publicado el 24 de febrero de 2010

EDUCAN ha firmado un convenio con ZOOS IBÉRICOS para desarrollar y aplicar protocolos de adiestramiento cognitivo-emocional en leones marinos, loros y delfines.

Siguiendo con las recomendaciones…

Publicado el 15 de febrero de 2010

Un libro ameno y fácil pero que da una visión amplia y muy actual de la dirección de la etología hoy. Fundamental.

Aclaración sobre algunos términos técnicos.

Publicado el

Unos enlaces de interés para conocer la actualidad de la etología

¿Fallar o acertar?

Publicado el 10 de febrero de 2010

El adiestramiento puede centrarse en los fallos o en los aciertos del perro, centrarse en los fallos suele conllevar una serie de problemas a largo plazo.

Adiestramiento en entornos de bienestar (I)

Publicado el 2 de febrero de 2010

El aprendizaje y la conducta funcionan de forma diferente en entornos de supervivencia y de bienestar, conocer las normas de enseñanza-aprendizaje de cada entorno nos permitirá mejorar nuestro adiestramiento.

Enseñar al perro a alejarse.

Publicado el 2 de enero de 2010

Los adiestradores debemos evitar al entrenar la llamada un exceso de dependencia del perro hacia el guía que limite su capacidad de divertirse y ser feliz en los paseos o que atrofie sus potencial como perro.

Consolidar fallos.

Publicado el 17 de diciembre de 2009

Muchas de las incorrecciones que aparecen en nuestros adiestramientos se deben a una mala elección de la técnica de enseñanza inicial y a que, sin darnos cuenta, les damos máxima consistencia reforzando la conducta incorrecta de forma variable.

Quitar y no poner.

Publicado el 11 de diciembre de 2009

Al iniciar un adiestramiento debemos enseñar al perro cómo trabajar más que conseguir la conducta a toda costa, para esto es importante que no cambiemos de forma de trabajo a cada problema. Es mejor dedicar tiempo a identificar qué impide el avance y eliminarlo que empezar a probar técnica tras técnica hasta conseguir la conducta.

Entrenamiento de expresiones faciales.

Publicado el 20 de noviembre de 2009

El entrenamiento de expresiones faciales es la máxima dificultad de las conductas que se pueden entrenar con el reforzador condicionado «clicker», además permite que perros con discapacidades físicas o de avanzada edad puedan seguir avanzando y disfrutando del adiestramiento.

La socialización de las razas sensibles

Publicado el 30 de septiembre de 2009

Las razas sensibles requieren una planificación de sus salidas de socialización para que estas no tengan el efecto contrario al deseado.

Gestión de estados emocionales negativos en perros sensibles

Publicado el 24 de septiembre de 2009

Es necesario construir en el perro los mecanismos de gestión de las emociones negativas, sin ello muchos perros sensibles generarán miedos e inseguridades con facilidad.

Aprendizaje y pensamiento a través de imágenes mentales (y II)

Publicado el 10 de septiembre de 2009

El pensamiento a través de imágenes es más rápido y fijo que el realizado a través de símbolos, por el contrario es menos afinado y preciso.

Refuerzos internos y externos

Publicado el 12 de agosto de 2009

Sabiendo que hay conductas que se refuerzan de forma externa (comida, juguetes…), otras que lo hacen de forma interna (diversión, autosatisfacción…) podemos pasar de unas a otras según convenga.

Montar una empresa de adiestramiento entre amigos

Publicado el 10 de julio de 2009

Cuando varios amigos se unen para poner en marcha una empresa de adiestramiento comercial pueden surgir algunos problemas. Con una serie de precauciones nos evitaremos muchos de ellos.

Educación vs adiestramiento

Publicado el 9 de julio de 2009

El adiestramiento utiliza procesos de aprendizaje (normalmente condicionamiento operante o procesos cognitivos) que hacen que el perro motorice las conductas en base a motivaciones de interés puramente individual.

La educación es un tipo especial de aprendizaje (o la combinación de múltiples tipos de aprendizaje) que tiene como objeto la correcta integración, maduración y eficacia del individuo en su grupo social.

Recepción de señales discretas y graduadas

Publicado el 26 de junio de 2009

Los perros no sólo se pueden adiestrar usando señales «blanco-negro», las señales graduadas ayudan a entrenar la complicidad con el guía y la competencia social.

Conductas de bienestar o confort

Publicado el 13 de junio de 2009

Los perros actúan de forma diferente si están en situación de búsqueda del bienestar o en situación de lucha por la supervivencia. Una de las mejores maneras de conocer la calidad de vida de nuestros perros es reconociendo las conductas de bienestar o confort que muestra.

Puntos a tener en cuenta para conseguir un cliente satisfecho

Publicado el 8 de junio de 2009

En ocasiones se ofrece un servicio de calidad pero los clientes no están contentos tenemos un problema. Y uno de los grandes.

Aprendizaje y pensamiento a través de imágenes mentales (I)

Publicado el 2 de junio de 2009

Los perros no son capaces de pensar operando símbolos como las personas, su pensamiento opera en base a imágenes mentales.

What makes for successful commercial training?

Publicado el 20 de mayo de 2009

Success in commercial training depends not only on the technical competence of the trainer, there are two more factors that are often neglected: customer satisfaction and the positive balance between hours worked and the price of training.

Cómo optimizar nuestras sesiones de adiestramiento comercial

Publicado el

De las tres variables del éxito comercial: calidad del trabajo, satisfacción del cliente y optimización del tiempo, voy a centrarme en este artículo en la última, ¿cómo optimizar el tiempo de adiestramiento? Aquí tenéis algunas claves: 1) Entrena la llamada desde el primer día, 2) Si algo en concreto no sale, no te obsesiones, 3) Entrena la concentración del perro antes que las conductas, 4) Divide las sesiones en tres partes, 5) Controla las ayudas corporales y 6) Evalúa bien la frecuencia de las sesiones

¿Qué es el éxito en adiestramiento comercial?

Publicado el

El éxito en el adiestramiento comercial no depende sólo de la competencia técnica del adiestrador, hay dos factores más que frecuentemente se desatienden: la satisfacción del cliente y el balance positivo entre horas trabajadas y precio del adiestramiento.

Welcome to «The Green Box»

Publicado el 1 de abril de 2009

LA CAJA VERDE (The Green Box) is a space to share my insights and analysis after twenty years of studying, training and working with behavioral problems in dogs and cats.

I will comment on dog training, commercial dog training, relationship in between humans and dogs, therapy dogs, sport work ….

Bienvenidos a «La Caja Verde»

Publicado el

LA CAJA VERDE es un espacio para compartir las reflexiones y análisis que Carlos Alfonso López García realiza después de 25 años de estudiar, adiestrar y trabajar con problemas de conducta en perros y en gatos.