Doing the Chicken Dance!

Recently I had the pleasure of attending the Association of Pet Dog Trainers Conference in San Diego. This annual conference hosts the leading positive reinforcement animal trainers, behaviorists, and scientists. It is always such a pleasure to attend these conferences to learn the latest and greatest positive reinforcement techniques, reinforce what I know, and to network with other trainers.

This year I decided to attend the much talked about Click-A-Chick seminar held by Terry Ryan. This seminar is a hands on workshop clicker training, yes you guessed it, CHICKENS! Real live chickens. The purpose of this experience is to sharpen up the mechanical skills of the trainer (improving the timing of the click and the criteria designation for the behavior). Chickens move extremely fast so capturing the behavior that you are looking for with a precise "click" of a clicker takes some skill. (see information on clicker training here http://www.wagsandwiggles.com/clickertraining.pdf)

I have avoided this workshop for years because I have a bizarre phobia of flying birds. When Wags was first in operation in our little 3000 square foot building in Rancho Santa Margarita, the Wags birds "Wiggles" and "Giggles" used to fly around the office and freak me out. So, sitting in this seminar before the chickens came out, I was a nervous wreck. Nicole and Liz, trainers at Wags & Wiggles, were with me and helped me remain calm every time the chickens moved. During demonstration Terry Ryan had a chicken who was wildly flapping its wings. It made me very scared to start training one myself.

Then we got started. Once I laid my hands on that sweet Chick, I was calm and excited to train. We worked on teaching the chickens to peck a target at first. The timing of the click was very important. There were a few people in the room that did not have good timing, therefore their chickens walked to another trainer, pecked their hands, or flew away. Luckly none of us from Wags had that happen. We were amazing and our chickens were stellar. The chickens not only learned to peck the targets, but also to peck the small dot in the center of the target. Precision was what we worked up to and conquered!
We then taught the chickens to distinguish between targets by having them peck a red poker chip. After she was pecking the red one, we introduced a blue poker chip that we wanted her to ignore. If she pecked the blue one we just removed the red one (removed the opportunity for reward) until she stopped. Then the red poker chip came back as did the opportunity for more clicks/treats. She was pecking the red poker chip so hard she was flinging it off the table! Smart girl knew exactly what I wanted and was going for it with gusto!

This was such a great experience for me. I got to practice my mechanical skills and add Chickens the species of animal I have trained. It also helped me with my fear of flying birds.

I now have an obession with Chickens. Now I'll have to have those too. My husband is so thrilled.

~Lysa