Category: Crossing Over ¤
  Author: Shirley Chong ¤
   Title: How is this different from using praise? ¤

 Praise is different from a CR. My dogs consider praise to be nice, 
but heck, they live in my house, they get a lot of praise. This is 
actually an issue I've been thinking about lately because I saw a 
question (on a non-clicker training list) about how to raise a puppy 
to be a service dog in a multi-dog household. The question was how 
such a puppy becomes bonded and focused on humans rather than the 
other dog--the conventional wisdom is that if you allow the puppy to 
be with the other dogs the majority of the time, the puppy will be 
focused more on other dogs. I've seen this happen... with client's 
dogs. With my own pack, I have a bunch of obnoxious dogs who think 
other dogs are just fine but HUMANS are peachy-keeno (so they spend 
the majority of their lives trying to be close to me, even in 95 
degree Iowa summers). I'm sure all of you realize by now that I'm a 
very lazy trainer, so it shouldn't surprise anyone to hear that I 
don't keep my dogs separated.
   I think part of what happens is that I unconsciously use verbal 
praise to reinforce paying attention to me. Doesn't take very long--
Luke, the Boxer WonderPuppy, arrived Friday and yesterday evening he 
was more than happy to leave the pack at play and come to me when I 
said "Lukie, Lukie." And special things don't happen to dogs that 
aren't paying attention to me--hey, I don't NEED to have hot dog 
bodies pressed against me all the time! If they want to do their own 
thing, fine with me--they're never going to know how to open the 
fridge or drive a car or open a door...

M. Shirley Chong
The Well Mannered Dog