Book Review: "Don't Shoot The Dog" and the Ten Laws of Shaping

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been interested in behavioral training since my visit to Sea World's "Trainer for a Day".

While relaxing in Cabo San Lucas, I finished reading pioneering dolphin trainer Karen Pryor's "Don't Shoot The Dog": a must-read for anyone who teaches, trains, or learns (and yeah, that pretty much covers everyone).

Title: "Don't Shoot The Dog"
Author: Karen Pryor, 
Genre: Behavior, Psychology, Training, Animals

Summary: to quote the book's subtitle, "The New Art of Teaching and Training"

Favorite Quote:  Instead of a quote, here are her ten laws of shaping behavior:

1. Raise criteria in increments small enough that the subject always has a realistic chance for reinforcement.
2. Train one aspect of any particular behavior at a time. Don't try to shape for two criteria simultaneously.
3. During shaping, put the current level of response onto a variable schedule of reinforcement before adding or raising the criteria.
4. When introducing a new criterion, or aspect of the behavioral skill, temporarily relax the old ones.
5. Stay ahead of your subject: Plan your shaping program completely so that if the the subject makes sudden progress, you are aware of what to reinforce next.
6. Don't change trainers in midstream: you can have several trainers per trainee, but stick to one shaper per behavior.
7. If one shaping procedure is not eliciting progress, find another; there are as many ways to get behavior as there are trainers to think them up.
8. Don't interrupt a training session gratuitously. That constitutes a punishment.
9. If behavior deteriorates, "go back to kindergarten": quickly review the whole shaping process with a series of easily earned reinforcers.
10. End each session on a high note, if possible, but in any case quit while you're ahead.

Strengths: Entertaining and clear with excellent examples.

Weaknesses: No photos?

Conclusion: As I said earlier - a must read for teachers, trainers, and learners.
Follow all these steps and you might get this result (a dolphin even I can ride!).

Post-it Flags: 37 flags

* Each time I find an interesting quote, model, image, or idea in a book, I mark it with a Post-it flag. The more flags, the more value I found in the book.

Swimming with Dolphins

We're back from Hawaii...
and back to having Internet access.

I was surprised to find that there are still hotels in the US (the King Kamehameha in Kona) that don't have in-room internet.
Given how easy it is to set up wireless, it's almost inexcusable.

Still, this is the islands, so I found better things to do (though, it made it tough for me to keep up on the Yankees as they throttled the Boston Red Sox last week!).

One of those 'better things to do' was swimming with the dolphins at Kealakekua Bay.
Angie and I rented kayaks and paddled across the bay to do some snorkeling.
On the way, we passed the resident pod of dolphins and dove in to spend some time with them.

It was great watching them circle us. The pod had about 10 dolphins total, and a number of them passed within 5 feet of me.
Here are a few shots I took:

After the paddle, we pigged out on local fruits (tamarind, passionfruit - known as lilikoi on the island, white pineapple, and a fresh coconut).

Just another day in paradise!