Category: Advanced Stuff, Theory, Terms & Abbreviations ¤
  Author: George Keith ¤
   Title: Extinction Bursts - Keep the Faith! ¤

     I found out what an extinction burst was last night. I thought I knew
already. Oh, well.
     A training friend of mine asked me to work on down stay with her border
collie. She doesn't train with a clicker and was interested to see how I
approach it. She had previously done so down stay work with this dog but had
run into a snag.
     Without asking what the problem was, I agreed to see what I could do.
Instead of asking my friend what the problem was, I asked the dog. This was
the first time I have worked with a border collie. Boy was this dog fast. What
an incredible dog. I started by luring a couple of downs and clicking each. I
was able to quickly move on to voice command to get the down. I was walking
back and forth across the room to reset each trial. Soon I found the problem.
The first time that I pushed the criteria too far, WHAM! I had a barking dog
on my hands. My friend had a devious smile. I was given the eye and got barked
for every movement. This dog wanted that Pup-e-roni and I was not cooperating.
I tried waiting him out. Bark, bark, bark.... I kept move back and forth
ignoring the barks. I decided on some shaping. I ignored the barks and clicked
the downs. When this was moving along, I started clicking any quiet moments or
softer barks. Gradually, I got longer periods of quiet downs and more softer
barks. I kept pushing these criteria while still insisting on the down.
Suddenly I had a whole series of quiet downs each longer than the last up to
15 seconds. Wow!
     On the next trial, the barking returned with a vengence. I refused to
click any barking. I turned my face to the ceiling and my back to the dog. I
kept turning to keep my back to the dog. The barking was nonstop. After about
a minute of this, I went back to walking back and forth and trying for a down.
On about the fifth one the barking stopped and the clicking returned. Must
have been an extinction burst. I quickly pushed the down to about thirty
seconds and started adding distractions in the form of my moving around. This
dog was rock solid. I was soon able to walk anywhere in the room while the dog
stayed quietly down. I put away the food, got out a tennis ball and started
bouncing it and rolling it past the dog. For each click I let the dog get the
ball. No more mistakes.
     Next I gave the clicker to my friend and sat down. I think she expected
the dog to start barking again. I didn't know what to expect. But the dog was
perfect. It was a beautiful moment.

George Keith
Elgin, TX