Category: Crossing Over ¤
  Author: Karen Pryor ¤
   Title: The "Yes, but ...." ¤

Rob writes that various people are telling him that clicker training and
OC won't produce dogs that can "handle the stresses" of advanced
competition. (And correction-based training makes the dog more
stress-free? Just wondering.) Rob goes on:

 I am looking for specific examples
> of dogs with CDX, OTCh or field titles... 


Dear Rob, The "yes-but-" folks are a familiar event in the spread of
this technology. Whatever is accomplished, they say yes but it wouldn't
work in MY application.

Clicker training for dogs simply hasn't been around long enough to
develop OTCh dogs or field dog champions. Of course it will work, and
better than traditional methods. Maybe you and your lab will be among
the first C/T Top Dogs, so forge ahead! Three years from now
clicker-trained champions will be showing up all over the place.

Karen Pryor 

By the way, the uninformed skeptic or yes-butter is not limited to dog
trainers. Two weeks ago I was fortunate to be given a tour of the New
England Center for Children, where hundreds of children with autism and
related disorders are given gentle and effective shaping, and in many
cases make wonderful progress, through operant conditioning. Program
director Myrna Libby (who clicker-trains her Goldens) told me, "First
people used to say 'Well, it works with rats and pigeons, but it won't
work with primates.' Then they'd say, 'Well, it works with primates but
it won't work with people.' Now they say, 'Well, it works with the
neurologically impaired but it won't work with normal children.'
And so it goes...

Just ignore it--training well is the best revenge!

KP