Category: Advanced Stuff ¤
  Author: Victoria Farrington ¤
   Title: Using a NRM (No Reinforcement Marker) ¤

	I'm coming in on this late and haven't finished reading my e-mail
backlog but here goes...Pat was asking why someone would use a NRM right
from the start, before a behavior is on cue, and the brilliant Carol gave
one of those nicely squirrelly answers about it depending on the dog.
(Really that was a compliment.)  So I thought I'd try to flesh out how I
decided which dog it worked with.
	Dash loves to play games.  With or without me, with or without the
clicker.  As a puppy, he'd take his favorite toys and put them, oh on a
suitcase,under a blanket, in a hole--what will happen NOW?!!!  (It was a
joy and he still does some of this.  I do my best to encourage.)  Plus
he's got a teflon ego and when we're playing human/dog games, he'll give
me that "I'm sorry but YOU are wrong" look.  (Can you see why J&P was
doomed?  He thought I was "pulling his leg.")
	So when Dash is learning something new, especially something that
requires engagement with an object (an agility obstacle, a towel, a box, a
DB), he's all excited and NRM's do not in any way shape or form depress or
put him off.  One night after a bath, he started nosing around a towel.  I
clicked to let him know doing something with the towel was in order and
tossed him a treat he'd normally disdain.  Something like a piece of
kibble.  And he started in "what about this?"  Or this.  Or that.  What if
I stand on the towel and bark?  What if I poke it with my toe, my nose,
sit on it, stick my nose under it, toss it in the air?  He moves so fast
and is so excited that without "wrong" it would take me hours to get a
repetition of something close to what he last did and so the NRM's narrow
down the field for him.  I've even seen him go back and repeat a "wrong"
behavior as if he's checking to see if that one was really eliminated from
the possibilities.  A lot of creativity and energy and persistence and
this gamemanship thing are what keep him going.  I've given him as many as
10 or 11 wrongs in a row and seen nothing I'd call either depression or
frustration and when he does figure out what I wanted (most often I
suddenly decide to "want" the cutest), he really celebrates and the treat
is insignificant.  He just proved what a clever beast he is and that's the
real win.  This is actually a vice for both of us--it's so much fun we
sometimes spend all our training time playing "can you guess it?" games.
	I would never do this with my fox terrier bitch.  Shiva isn't much
of a problem solver.  To her, there's only 1 problem: how to get the
treat.  She isn't interested in guessing anything.  She gets frustrated if
she isn't correct and gets silly and upset, racing around in a manner I
can only describe as almost the opposite of his cavorting.  So with her,
there's much less monkey business.  I do my best to see that she's correct
right from the start, we work slowly with approximations and many many
repetitions.  I doubt if Shiva's brain is ever engaged in the process.  It
seems all spine and muscle memory.  (Dash OTOH has to know what he's
doing.  WHen I tried clicking him for yawning, we had to eliminate all his
other motions right down to an ear flick before he really believed I
wanted him to yawn.)  Shiva is very good however at learning something and
letting it be.  Dash tinkers (and hears "wrong").  Shiva couldn't tinker
if her life depended on it.  She learns exactly what you taught her and
she'll repeat it into infinity.
	A third dog, Winston, is neither as creative as Dash or as all
fired determined as Shiva but he's easily hurt.  He can play a little of
the hot/cold game but he has to be right within a certain amount of time
or he shows stress.  I imagine I went through this stage with Dash and
created my own monster by encouraging him to keep trying.  I can't make
Shiva into this kind of pingpong ball of problem solving but I could
probably do it with Winston.
	To some extent (and here's another squirrelly answer), it may
depend on what you're comfortable with or what you're training the dog to
do.  If Shiva had better nerves in dealing with other dogs, she'd probably
be the dog I'd expect to do well in obedience because she could do almost
exactly the same thing again and again and never get bored, restless,
thrown by enrvironmental differences.  (If no other dogs are present, she
sees and hears nothing but me and can heel until she drops without a paw
out of place.)  Dash likes agility because the obstacles are in different
orders and because I'm not competitive in anything, I enjoy his creativity
and don't really mind if he throws in something funny from time to time.
I even think I'm rather impatient and prefer a dog who's trying to solve a
problem rather than training a dog like Shiva who requires more meticulous
shaping and schedules.
	I've often wondered about this.  Has anyone else had experiences
with dogs who are trying to solve problems versus dogs who are repeating
what was successful without thought?  Occasionally when I think of
something like Karn Pryor's comment that you're training the spine, I
wonder if I've done this all wrong with Dash but I like what I see so I
don't fret too much.  I just think there's a difference and how you're
training can cause different problems.  Like Dash refusing to believe I
really want a repetition of an involuntary behavior like a sneeze or yawn
or Shiva thrown into a tizzy when it's stimulus control time.
	Whoops.  I'm babbling.
	hope this contributes SOMETHING.
	Victoria Farrington