#169 - Kiki Yablon: Why Your Dog Won’t Settle When You’re Busy

This week we’re joined by Kiki Yablon, behavior analyst, dog trainer, KPA faculty member, and general bad a**. Kiki’s incredible skills of observation, communication, and implementation are honestly inspiring. 

If you’ve found yourself running around in circles trying to figure out how to apply the science to your training, felt your eyes glaze over at jargon, or broken down trying to work while your dog yells at you, we promise, Kiki’s teaching brings a beautiful, practical, and applicable simplicity to behavior change. Tune in to hear Emily and Kiki talk about some real nerdy stuff, how “outside” skills help you as a dog trainer, and so much more (we get a little windy in this one 😂) 

TLDL (too long, didn’t listen): 3 Key Takeaways 

1️⃣ Describe what you’re doing – Saying “I’m doing classical conditioning” leaves a lot open for interpretation. Instead, describe what you’re doing, and see how it opens you up to see other factors influencing your outcome. 

2️⃣DRO is time-based, not behavior-based – If you're reinforcing a specific alternative, that's DRA. DRO is about the absence of a behavior for a set interval.  

3️⃣ New behavior comes from old behavior – Learners don't start from scratch when something stops working. They pull from their history. A richer repertoire means more options before problem behaviors resurface. 

For the full episode show notes, including the resources mentioned in this episode, go here.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Kiki: I, I just feel like it's so not true in everyday life. Where, where you're like, you need to change emotions before you can change behavior and you need to change behavior through, you need to change emotions through associations pairing, pairing things, if I am showing you that I hate card games by flipping the table when you invite me to play cards, you could probably get me to come sit at the card table if you put a charcuterie board on it, and then I wouldn't flip it because I like food, but my emotions about card games are not gonna change. My feelings about card games are not gonna change. And if there is no charcuterie board, then I might still flip the table.

You could also teach me, listen, if you don't wanna play cards, you could just say no thanks. You do not need to flip the card table. Much less effortful. Maybe less fun. But you could you could just say, no thanks, and that would be helpful, but that doesn't magically make me wanna then come play cards with you.

You gotta ask me why, why do you hate cards so much? And then I will tell you, because I don't know the rules, I don't play cards enough that I can ever remember the rules to a, a single game. And so every time I sit down on a card game, I'm starting from zero. And I'm losing because I don't know how to play.

So then we could decide like, would it improve the quality of my life to be able to participate in card games? Probably maybe my whole family likes to play card games and I don't, so I'm isolated at the holidays or something.

you could teach me the rules and give me, a practice schedule and that would change how I felt about hard games. 

[00:01:44] Allie: Welcome to Enrichment for the Real World, the podcast devoted to improving the quality of life of pets and their people through enrichment. We are your hosts, Allie Bender...

[00:01:54] Emily: ...and I'm Emily Strong...

[00:01:56] Allie: ...and we are here to challenge and expand your view of what enrichment is, what enrichment can be and what enrichment can do for you and the animals in your lives. Let's get started.

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of Enrichment for the Real World, and I want to thank you for rating, reviewing, and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts.

[00:02:16] Emily: All right. Let's start off with your name, pronouns and Pets. 

[00:02:20] Kiki: Uh, 

Kiki Ya Alon she, her and this my dog. My, I have one dog whose name is Finn. I did not name him. He came with that name. And he is a almost 11-year-old mix of apparently a tree walker, coonhound lab and chow.

[00:02:40] Emily: What a

fun mix. 

[00:02:41] Kiki: it's all fun until somebody climbs a tree. Now he's like a, he looks like a lab who's had the air sucked out of his head.

[00:02:49] Emily: Excellent. Excellent.

[00:02:50] Kiki: isn't that, isn't that right?

[00:02:52] Emily: I enjoy that description.

Yeah. Tree walkers are fun. They uh, they they earned their name. That's Sure. That's for

[00:02:58] Kiki: Yeah. he he hasn't done that with us. But he apparently climbed a tree with, in his previous household, once up, climbed up, not down.

[00:03:08] Emily: And then needed help getting

down. 

[00:03:12] Kiki: Yes. Yeah.

he was a, he was a tree walker. Coonhound on the way up and a lab on the way down. 

[00:03:17] Emily: I love that. Yes. That's great. That's excellent. All right, well, tell us your story and how you got to where you are.

[00:03:23] Kiki: Well, I went to college originally for journalism, and then I was a newspaper and magazine editor for most of 20 years with a brief interlude as a helping to open a rock club and serving as the publicist for the rock club. And uh, and also playing in bands and stuff. I, I always had a job, but and then in 2005 I finally got a dog.

Like I, I wanted a dog so badly the entire time I was a child and never got one. And I think at age 35 uh, I finally was like, I think what happened is the drummer in my band got a, a second dog and I was like, said to my husband, I said, they have two and we have none. So we, so we went and we went and got a dog and she, I always wanted to do, like, I wanted to get a dog and I wanted to train my dog to do all kinds of things, but I really had no experience in that realm at all.

So when I got my dog, I showed my dog to my next door neighbor who happened to be a marine mammal trainer at the Shed Aquarium. And she showed me some clicker training, quick demo of clicker training with her own dog. And I was like, I don't know what that magic was, but I would like to learn how to do that.

And so then I went looking for clicker trainer. I found Laura Elli. We took some classes with her and I, I think we took two classes and I was like, this, we were like the star of the class, like we always got picked to demo and stuff. And then I thought, okay, my dog is trained now. And so I started taking her to work uh, which she hated.

She also went to daycare for a little while and um, then started to have fights with other dogs at the dog park. Anyway, she, she got to a point where she was barking and lunging at just name a trigger, like it, it was on the list, people, other dogs motorcycles, bicycles, trucks, luggage, someone who looked at the car from across a four lane road and she was obviously miserable.

And I didn't understand how the positive reinforcement stuff I had learned in my two classes could be used to reduce unwanted behavior. I did not understand the basic model of replace rather than suppress. And so I went on a wild west journey through dog training as the worst possible client. Like, the client who's like, I've done two sessions with you.

I isn't my dog fixed going on to the next, and then I, like, I went to a trainer. I never did anything like, I never used a shock collar. I never used a prong collar, but I thought about it ' cause I was volunteering at a shelter where they used them and it seemed like that's what you had to do.

I just didn't wanna do it. So I started reading some books. I found this thing called The Third Way. I looked for a trainer who did that. They had me kind of hold the, her collar up. Is this the longer, longer version of this than you wanted?

[00:06:25] Emily: No, I am here for

all of this. I'm loving it. Keep going.

[00:06:28] Kiki: they had me like sort of make her sit if she, if she got up when somebody approached her, I was to pull up gently on the collar and until she sat back down.

And then while I was doing stuff that I was learning there, she bit somebody, bit, a bit a jogger when we were on vacation in uh, visiting my parents. It was just, it was a mess. And that was like, about two and a half years into having her. I was just reading every book I could get my hands on, kind of agnostically, 

uh, About dog training.

And I got so frustrated because I couldn't figure out who to give my money to,

like, that I, it was just, I was just reading all these books to try to figure out who was right. ' cause I got all this conflicting advice. And then after about three years of that, I was like, huh, maybe I'm interested in this.

So then I started volunteering at a shelter. And I, or I volunteered at a shelter, and then I did care prior academy. And then I worked for Laura for eight years. Went back, went back around to Laura and persuaded her to let me intern. And then after I went through KPA, she hired me. And then I think probably the next big thing that happened was getting access to Susan Friedman and Jesus Rosales Ruiz through the Karen Pryor Network.

So taking LLA, taking um, these three weekend long workshops with Jesus that he's, I don't think he's done anything like that since. But he came to St. Louis for three weekends and only like three years in a row. And there was, there was just like 25 people there, intentionally, small group. And it was just great.

And then I started to think. So then I started to work for Susan Friedman after I took her course. She let me become go through the process to become a ta and then I started thinking that I would like to go to grad school for this, because Jesus had mentioned that UNT was going to, don't get your hopes up 'cause this is old news that didn't happen.

But he, Jesus for a while, I think was talking about like, maybe there was gonna be an online master's program that was more geared towards animal people. Just, I think probably because we, a lot of us are adults who can't just pick up and go to Denton for three years or whatever. And um, and so I called every few months for a few years asking if they were doing it yet, and then they, they had decided to go another way.

Like they developed a PhD program instead.

And so then I started looking just at other online, a, BA programs that weren't necessarily geared towards animal people. Um, And I settled on Kansas, university of Kansas, partially. I looked there because that's, I knew that was where Jesus went. And it turns out that it's it's a, it's a pretty big place in the history of a BA.

It's like where the journal of journal of Applied Behavior Analysis was founded and sort of one of the strongholds of the applied field. Was there which is why Jesus went there also, I think. And then, so I did that in 20, started that in 2018 and finished in 2022 with a little bit of delay from the pandemic, which kind of shut down research and caused me to have to come up with a whole new thesis uh, idea that I could do over Zoom.

And I don't know. And then in 2020 I started to get opportunities to do more teaching of other trainers. So I was offered a position as Karen prior Academy faculty. Susan, I still work for Susan, and Susan has me doing more stuff. And then I started to get asked to speak at conferences. So that's where I am.

And now I don't know what my job is, 

[00:09:56] Emily: Your job is being professionally awesome. Yeah, thank you for sharing that journey. And I, I wanna circle back to something that you said near the beginning of, of your story, which is that you were, a bad client because you were kind of making the rounds.

And I wanna, I wanna point out that you couldn't have been that bad a client 'cause look at where you ended up. And I think that it's really beautiful that the, that the, when clients behave, engage in sort of that like, I tried this and it didn't work, so I'm gonna try something else. There are definitely dangers and downsides to that, but to me, I see clients like that being really curious. Wanting to sort of like test something from multiple angles. And that's one of the things that I value about you is your curiosity and how you approach everything with what can I learn from this? How more can I, what more can I learn? Like how do I incorporate this into my understanding? And so it, it doesn't surprise me that that was how you started, because I see that a lot with people who tend to sort of like have to try everything first and then they circle back. I had many clients like that who did like one or two sessions with me moved off, and then like a year or two later they're like, okay, we've tried like nine different people can, can we revisit what you were suggesting? And I find them to be curious people and, and I think that's such a valuable asset.

And so I just wanna say like, don't beat yourself up for that, because I think that that just, it was the beginnings of you becoming who you are. And I think that's beautiful. I think that's a beautiful part of your journey. And also,

[00:11:33] Kiki: I think that's too. I think I would call it impatience rather than curiosity if we have to put a label on it. But I also think, I don't beat myself up for it because I think it is it's about it. I mean, it certainly influenced how I might talk to my clients in their first in our first encounter.

Like, I didn't know how many sessions it was gonna take, and I still can't answer that question when people ask me, how many sessions is this gonna take? I have no idea. But that doesn't mean that I can't give them sort of an overview of like, what, what are the factors that are gonna play into this?

What kind of, what, what kind of path are we gonna take? Like what do we gotta learn first? And then what do we gotta see before we go on to the next thing? And like, I can tell them that some things might take a while. And that there are a lot of variables involved. And I can tell them also like what I feel like I was missing, which is that there's this basic problem solving model that we can apply.

And I can kind of inoculate them a little bit against, the wild west stuff that they might encounter out there. By giving them that problem, solving that basic problem solving model and why that's our preferred model. 

[00:12:48] Emily: I love that. I mean, yes, exactly that your experience helped you to better understand your client's perspective and, and has made you really good at framing expectations for your client of like, this is what the journey is gonna look like. Can't

guarantee things, but this is how we're gonna be thinking about it.

That's beautiful. Right.

[00:13:08] Kiki: Yeah. 

Well, it's made me better at it. We'll see if I'm good at it, but

in a given situation. 

[00:13:14] Emily: Nobody's perfect at it. It's,

[00:13:16] Kiki: Yeah. I'm aware of it. That's step one,

[00:13:18] Emily: yeah, I'm not sure perfection exists. But yes, it's made you more aware of it and help, help you support your clients through that journey. 'cause you know what it was like firsthand to be that

way. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And yes, I mean, you and I have talked about this before, but I, I've told you, you're like the cooler version of me because I went through a similar, but Jan, your path of like, I spent 10 years in the music industry, in music journalism, but didn't do anything nearly as cool as you did. But, but you, we have that shared background of, of music writing event management and public relations, and then flowing into behavior. And I definitely know how that aspect of my background has informed how I currently move through my profession. But I would love to hear how your background in journalism has helped you in terms of like how you apply the skills you learned in that kind of music journalism life to your behavior consulting life.

[00:14:23] Kiki: Well, yeah, so a big, a big chunk of my, I think about eight years, it's either six years or eight years, was as a music editor. I was not a music writer. I didn't review things and I didn't interview people. And then I also worked in some non-music arenas. Like I worked at Outside Magazine and I, that was my first job.

And I worked at at like a city magazine, and then I was like sort of promoted from music editor into a, like a more like a managing editor job. 

But I've always been primarily an editor actually. And so I don't. I don't like really talking to people on the phone. Like I, I like, I, I think the like, sort of answer people expect there is like, oh, you're really good at interviewing people.

And I don't know if that's like the strength that came with, I don't think that was ever a strength for me. And then, well, I could tell other people how to interview people. But uh, I think there's something about, it's like, logic, I,

like there's something about the editing stuff that translates for me in terms of sort of being able to put pieces together in an order or um, and then also just sort of the, the broader journalism thing, like sort of being skeptical, like understanding where it would be a good idea to ask a question and not just take what is received.

I think those have been helpful, but I think probably I had those skills, like, before journalism and then they helped with journalism. So I dunno if they came from journalism or if they led me there in the first place, 

[00:16:00] Emily: Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's probably a little bit of both, right? Like there was something that, that you already had or you could already do, or you had a, had a propensity towards that, that attracted you to that profession, and then the profession refined those, those skills.

[00:16:16] Kiki: On the other hand, I feel like a little bit like the way I ended up there was like, when you, when you're 16 and someone's like, you're good at English, you should, you should work at the newspaper. So it was a little bit like that too. And, and there are things that, that I always didn't, didn't feel like we're a good fit about it.

And then when I started learning about behavior analysis, there was, I had this feeling that I never had about journalism that was sort of like, ah, like, this is my thing. This, this makes sense to me. And is perpetually interesting to me. yeah, I don't know. The other thing I was gonna say that wait, I might have just slipped outta my head.

that came from journalism. A journalism background. Nope. Forgot it. It'll probably come back.

[00:17:00] Emily: that's okay. Yeah. Yeah. I, I definitely get that. I, I, loved music, I loved writing and so I was like, music writing, am I right? But I also loved animals, so I was working as a vet tech at the same time 'cause I couldn't choose. And, but neither of them were really it. And then when I took Susan Friedman, the first class that I took from Susan Friedman, I had that same feeling like, oh, like this is it. Like, so I, I definitely get that. 'cause that was my experience as well. Like, I enjoyed those things and, and I was, there were certain things that I was good at that led me to those things. And also neither of them were it, the way that behavior is it for me. Right. So I totally get that. I totally get that. But I also see, I see. I. What you were saying about the logic that it gave you or that you were fine, let's say the logic that you refined in your, in your job in journalism. I see that in your work, because your work has really strong instructional design. There's a logical flow to how you talk about things and teach things and and how you sort of investigate.

So I definitely see that in what you do, for sure.

[00:18:11] Kiki: I just remembered what the other thing was.

Which is that from journalism, which is that like one of the things they teach you in journalism is don't use a 5 cent word. Don't use a 25 cent word when a 5 cent word will do. Especially in like, if you're like, a lot of my classes in journalism school where about like writing for a daily newspaper and it's also like, it needs to be at like a sixth grade level.

And like, like just the, like I feel like that is one of my strong suits is explaining things and that, that has helped me with what I like. I'm not sure what my niche is, but I think I keep, people keep asking me to describe it in a bio or something. So

I think it's like the ability to take, to understand science concepts and then translate them in a way that is more simple to under, like easier to understand and apply, but still accurate.

[00:19:09] Emily: Yeah,

that's science. Communication is a skillset

in and of itself that is different from either communication or science.

[00:19:16] Kiki: Or at least this science, 

[00:19:17] Emily: Yeah. Yeah. Yes, that makes sense. I, I feel like, once again, you're the cooler version of me in that regard because I really enjoy science, communication. I enjoy breaking things down to make them simple for people to understand. And also, I'm hyper leic and I started reading at a super, super young age. And so I still struggle to understand what a sixth grade reading level is. And I'll use words that I think are simple. And Allie is, I don't, I mean, I, I, I'm a much better person because of my partnership with Allie, because she'll be like, Emily, that is a really pretentious word.

Like, why wouldn't you just use this word instead? And I'm like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. And it's not, I'm not intentionally trying to talk over people's heads. I just really struggle with knowing what. Like, what is reasonable vocabulary? So once again, like I'm really, I'm really impressed by your ability to do that because you've got strengths where I, I don't, and I, and I'm not saying that I don't have strengths.

I'm not, this is not me demeaning myself. It's me acknowledging like, the reason you're on this podcast is because I, I watch you work and I just think you do a lot of extraordinary things. And so I'm just telling

you the things that you

do that are extraordinary to me. So yeah, I love, I love that about you and, and the work that you do. Okay. But let's, let's, I wanna kind of shift topics a little bit because

I also wanna know about, I wanna talk about the, your degree because this is something that I really am I grapple with this a lot and I've, I've, we, you and I have had conversations about it and I I don't, I have, I, I've, I'm sensing something or I'm feeling something, but I'm not yet really able to articulate it.

So I would love to hear your thoughts about why you made the choice to get a master's degree in behavior analysis, and how has it helped you in your practice? Like what, what are the functional benefits of having got that advanced degree for you?

[00:21:10] Kiki: So, you know, I was like a grown ass lady when I went to uh, get it. you know, I've been outta college for, I, I can't, like so long. I can't even tell you I can't do the math right now. Like I'm a middle-aged person. And honestly, like, I just wanted uh, more information. Like, I didn't wanna leave dog training and become an academic.

And so, but I felt like, I could, I mean, mentoring with Susan was like, as. As good preparation, I think as I could have gotten for my program, like I felt better. I felt like I knew more than people that were there who had come up through, uh, working in a, BA, like about the conceptual side and stuff like that.

I still don't know, you know, there's still things they, they, they skills they have that I'll never have because I haven't had the opportunity to, to use to do those things. But I really just wanted a deeper understanding and I could the online, so I went, I went through an online program and I think there's pros and cons to that.

I got a lot more information. I really liked my program. It was a hundred percent live, so it wasn't like, you know, asynchronous classes. There was no discussion boards. It was like meeting, like on Zoom, which as it turns out, everybody else in grad school was doing in the same time that I was in for, for two of the years that I was there.

So, I think the downsides are that you're not immersed in a community where everyone you know is talking about it all the time. Where you don't have to, maybe you don't have to have another job because you're teaching. You're, you're working as a teaching assistant. I mean, I worked like three quarter time through, through the whole thing, which is part of why it took a little longer.

And, and the other big thing I feel like I missed is that I didn't get to participate very much in other people's research. So I didn't, you know, I wasn't doing a bunch of other research projects or helping with a bunch of other research projects before I had to do my own.

But I did like that my program one thing that I feel is really important about the program I went through is that it did require you to do an experimental thesis and then defend it just like the students on campus.

It no longer has that requirement. Now it has a capstone project, which I'm sure is also valuable, but it's a little bit of, I think it's a little bit of a bummer. So, so I wanted, I wanted to know more, and that's pretty much it. Like, it wasn't like I wasn't thinking like, oh, I wanna present at conferences or whatever.

I just although that did happen, like when I wasn't done with school yet. But yeah, I just, I just wanted more information and and I do, I definitely feel like I got it and that doing research was really an important part of. That learning experience, because I'm generally good at school. Like I am historically good at school, like get good grades, do, do well on different kinds of tests, even though I hate some of, some kinds of tests, like I can still do well on a multiple choice test.

But like the thesis part was like, okay, now plan something to do on your own and then do it,

and then write about it and then talk about it. And that was really hard for me because I, I don't think I'm a, like, what, I don't think I'm a self-starter. I think I'm a person who, if you give me a task, I will do a good job at it, but if left to my own devices, I would will sleep and watch tv.

So, so that was really important to me. And like, I don't, like, I don't necessarily even love what I did in my thesis at this point, but I, it was such a valuable experience and like five years later I am still drawing things from it that are applicable to like, I'm still thinking about what I encountered while I was doing it.

I'm still trying to think of better ways to do some of it. I learned some things like sort of firsthand instead of just somebody telling me them. So I thought, I thought it was. Extremely valuable. And then I think at this point there are so few of us who are both working trainers and have that kind of background that it has helped like sort of, I don't know, like make me a niche.

[00:25:27] Emily: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I definitely see that.

I think one, I think one thing that, one of the reasons that I'm asking you this question and one reason that it's really. Kind of almost usually in the forefront of my mind of like how, how much education is enough education, what kind of educations actually give you the skill sets that you're

actually going to use in the field. But the reason that it has been like forefront of my mind a lot recently is because Ally and I are working on a series of courses about classical conditioning and the practical application of it. And the thing that we struggle with and we have a lot of conversations about, and it's taken us longer than usual to build this course because of this, is that that kind of balance that we're trying to strike between accuracy and accessibility of like there are differences and those differences matter, but do they matter enough in terms of teaching people how to do things well?

Do they matter enough in terms of what we need people to be able to, I recognize, identify, know what to, what decisions to make around those those things that they're seeing. And that has been a real journey for us of like. W if a behavior analyst re like, reviewed our course, would they be like big mad about how we're talking about these things and how much does that matter?

Right. So like I think that's, that's what I'm curious about. Like where, where do you find ha has your master's degree helped you in terms of that process of like learning what stuff you can kind of select out? 'cause it's too granular or theoretical, it doesn't matter versus it, I would've been much better at my job if I had understood these principles better.

You know what I mean?

[00:27:11] Kiki: Yeah, I mean, well, like, I just, I mean, you were asking me why I went to school, and I think there's, like, we get a certain amount, like if you pursue it, you can do workshops with, Jesus, and you can do LLA. But I think people hit a point where they need more information for some of their cases and they either go get more information in that line, or maybe if they don't know there's more to be had they jump ship and go dabble in another field, and I do think that we see some problematic things in our community that way where it's, and, and, and honestly like, several of my presentations over the past couple years have been kind of, related to that. Like this idea that operant conditioning is simple or that, you can only change emotions with classical conditioning or that you, that applied behavior analysis is just a therapy that's used with people with autism and it's like, all of those things are not true.

Is it important for our community to know more about that? I mean, 99% of the time, maybe not. I don't, I don't know. But I do think I think we get into real pickles when, for instance, when people think that you must, like there are times when you, a classical conditioning procedure would be the best choice to do first, and that has somehow gotten translated into, and I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't know, but like, that has gotten translated into, you must change emotions before you can change behavior as if emotions are a purely separate thing from behavior or response.

Our responses, what our body does on multiple levels. And then the only way to do that is through pairing.

Like, and I do think that that is like a harmful line of logic. 

Like, you, you, you, you, you can only change emotions are respondent entities. That's. That's not the behavior analytic perspective on emotions.

And in fact, there isn't a behavior analytic perspective on emotions. There is, there are a number of them as there are a number of them in neuroscience, like in neuroscience, they're all going crazy. I mean, I'm not a neuroscientist, but they're all like, ah, we don't know what emotions actually are anymore.

[00:29:36] Emily: yeah. I was gonna say there's no consensus on what emotions are in neuroscience.

[00:29:40] Kiki: yeah, and you have like, you have like, Joseph Ladu like retracting things that he said about what the amygdala does 20 years ago. And then you have like dog trainers citing things that have been debunked from like sep that, that have been called into question by, by the ongoing march of science.

And that's not my area of expertise, but I think some of the same stuff happens, so, for us, and so we don't know what emotions are exactly, so we need to kind of define what they are. And then and then, so there's, there's that, there's the idea that, okay, because Watson thought he was doing Pavlovian conditioning in 1920, while Skinner was 16 years old.

A condition emotional response is some kind of respondent phenomenon.

And so. Emotions are respondent entities and they can only be changed by doing procedures that specifically address respondent behavior.

So my example for this is I use this at Expo Live, so sorry if you, if it's, I've used it like in two different talks, so I'm sorry if you've heard it before, but maybe someone else won't. If if I hate, if I am showing you that I hate card games by flipping the table when you invite me to play cards,

right?

I, I just feel like it's so not true in everyday life. Where, where you're like, you need to change emotions before you can change behavior and you need to change behavior through, you need to change emotions through associations pairing, pairing things, right? So you could probably get me to come sit at the card table if you put a charcuterie board on it, and then I wouldn't flip it because I like food, but

my emotions about card games are not gonna change. My feelings about card games are not gonna change. And if there is no charcuterie board, then I might still flip the table. You could also teach me, listen, if you don't wanna play cards, you could just say no thanks. You do not need to flip the card table.

Much less effortful. Maybe less fun. But you could you could just say, no thanks, and that would be helpful, but that doesn't magically make me wanna then come play cards with you.

You gotta ask me why, why do you hate cards so much? And then I will tell you, because I don't know the rules, I don't play cards enough that I can ever remember the rules to a, a single game.

And so every time I sit down on a card game, I'm starting from zero. And I'm losing because I don't know how to play. Right. And so if you, so then we could decide like, would it improve the quality of my life to be able to participate in card games? Probably maybe my whole family likes to play card games and I don't, so I'm isolated at the holidays or something.

Right. So you could te you could teach me the rules and give me, a practice schedule and that would change how I felt about hard games.

So I think like I was listening to your live at the ranch about classical conditioning and um, I remember the story about Ally I haven't finished it yet, but I had remember the story about Ally getting bitten by a dog who had been taught to approach for food.

And I think that's like a kind of a good example, like. We, we are very unspecific when we talk about changing feelings.

Like I have never had a case where I paired other dog, the site of other dogs with food, and then the dog liked other dogs like wanted to interact with or play with

other dogs. Like that's not really how it works.

Like, I might have changed their feelings about the sight of another dog from X number of feet because they can do another behavior. They can look at me to get food. 

But I would not, stake my career on then putting that dog in with, you know, another dog in a, in a pen if the dog has been barking and lunging at other dogs to make them go away, right?

And yet, weirdly, a lot of times with people that very thing works. Not always, but like enough that it's not like totally out of the question that you would make friends with a dog who was suss who was like, I don't know about you, that you would make friends with them by feeding them. Like

it's not out of the question.

So it's like really what are, what are all the variables that are, that are at play there? It's not just about pairing. 

Right. It's, and also like, I think a lot of us find that if we don't that if we give the dog food for

approaching, but then we also throw it away, that's more effective than if we like stick it in their mouth. Right. And why is that? I think it's 'cause there's an opera. I think we have to look at operant contingencies there. 

[00:34:20] Emily: because distance from the stressor Is

reinforcing,

and 

we, we see that part Yeah.

It's, it's part of the reinforcement picture, right?

Yes. Yeah.

[00:34:29] Kiki: And then I always think you know how, like you, you'd be at like a conference and like you'd just be in the hall and somebody will say something to you and then that's the best thing you got from the conference. 

[00:34:38] Emily: Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:34:40] Kiki: I, I still have this memory of, and I hope he forgives me if I've gotten it wrong, but I remember Jesus saying to me something in the, like I was asking him something about like under threshold,

just in the walking in the hallway.

And he said, oh, the reason to keep dogs under threshold when you're doing counter conditioning is to avoid reinforcing unwanted behavior. And I was like. Oh,

well then, well then on the flip side, when we approach the dog from an under, an under threshold distance and we throw food or and we throw food away from us and they're just standing there, do we have to take into consideration that part of why this might be working is that we are reinforcing standing there, right.

Or um, and then I just, and then like Lindsey Woods resource guarding protocol was another kind of mind breaker for me. So she came up through Jean Donaldson channels where um, I think there is like an emphasis on sort of classical conditioning first. And so she was, and she was doing that, she was a appro, doing the stuff that's in mine, which, I've used many times.

Like you approach under threshold, you toss the chicken, you leave. But she started to notice that when she approached

after tossing chicken for a while, when she approached the dog would lift its head and look at her. And then she started to reinforce looking at her. She, she could talk about her own protocol better than than I can. But but then she felt that her procedures were moving much faster when she started paying attention to that operant behavior.

And so I was thinking about that, and I was also thinking about some other things. And

I think it was I had this case where

the dog was, so there was a dog that was like and this wasn't like the thing where I was trying to do classical. Oh, oh, I know what it was. The, the other thing that I that, that started me thinking about this was this, this dog who was just like the entrance to the house is like, underground, like below grade.

And so people would come in the house and they would come up this stair steep staircase into a big open area, but just, just right by the, where they came up, there was like a cabinet. So it was like a little tight space that they walked up into. And they, people had this big friendly lab who had come to the top of the stairs and jump on you, like this tall flight of stairs.

And, a lot of, I think like the old way I would think about doing operant stuff. There is. I would I would teach the dog first to go to a mat, get that on cue. Then I would do a cue transfer of, person comes to the top of the stairs, give the cue, go to your mat, then reinforce, and when you think about teaching that to a client, it's like, ugh.

Like, so much, so many steps.

Yeah. And so what I decided to do was just, I put a bucket of treats at the bottom of the stairs and I said, every time you come up, there is going to be a mat next to the stairs. Mostly he had a little experience with the mat, but like, not, he wasn't going there and staying.

But it's mostly a target for you.

So when you come up the stairs, you get a treat at the bottom, and you're gonna stick your hand out the side of the stairs and put a treat on the mat, and then you're gonna come in. And then what we started to see is people, when people came up the stairs, he just went around and waited on the mat and they didn't have to pre-teach it.

But and that's a stimulus pairing procedure. It's, we did it regardless of whether he was standing in front of the thing or standing to the side already. But it, it produced an operant behavior. And so we have to ask. Classical conditioning is about teaching new elicits for respondent behavior.

What's going on that we're get, we get operant behavior.

And I think now, I think what it is, the way I would describe it is it's, it's a Q transfer, it's transfer of stimulus control or otherwise known as Q transfer. It's New Q, old Q.

So, and the, the old Q because when you, when you broaden out, right, it's like cues aren't just like things that people tell dogs to do.

It's like everything, any, any antecedent event that,

[00:38:52] Emily: functions as a

[00:38:53] Kiki: that

[00:38:53] Emily: discriminative stimulus.

[00:38:55] Kiki: yeah. Or even like, I think some of the things we talk about as queues are even broader than that. They maybe don't just signal the availability of the reinforcer. Like, but they so the old queue to go to the mat is putting a treat on it, and then the new queue is person comes up the stairs.

And so that kind of started me on this whole kick where I think there's a lot of things in behavior analysis and, and classical conditioning isn't even really that big a part of behavior analysis. It's like a separate field, part of a separate field. But like, there's so many things that we, where we call both the process and the procedure by the same name.

Including reinforcement. Like reinforcement is the process, but also like we call it reinforcement when we do a thing that we hope will be

[00:39:41] Emily: Right. Like I

used positive reinforcement. Well, you, you

used a procedure that resulted in this

process. 

[00:39:47] Kiki: But I don't bitch about that anymore because it's not wrong because we, 'cause we use the same thing for both purposes and that's really messy.

And we do the same thing with respondent conditioning or classical conditioning and operating conditioning. We use it to, to talk about the effect, the learning. And we also talk about it as the thing we do to try to produce the learning. And so I think that we should just refer to what we're doing as stimulus, stimulus pairing, because when you make one stimulus, so stimulus do many things at once, right?

The same stimulus can elicit, drooling and tell you that reinforcement is available if you sit the exact same stimu. And when we pair two stimuli, one stimulus will start to take on some of the effects of the other one.

All of them, like it can become a conditioned stimulus. It can become a conditioned reinforcer, it can become a conditioned punisher, it can become a conditioned motivating operation.

And so if we just, I feel like if we just talk about what we're doing instead of what we like, the, the, if we say we're pairing two stimuli, instead of saying we're pairing we're uh, classical conditioning, then it is going to be, that's gonna cue us to look at all of the things that are going on,

right?

Like, when you click the click, this is like Jesus and Mary and Mary Hunter. Like this is their whole kind of line of research right now. They're, they're their big in or Mary's big interest. I, I don't know what he, if Jesus has other interests, but, but Mary is teaching this, and I'm sure Mary has other interests too.

God, I'm just digging myself a hole. They're teaching this fabulous course on reinforcement systems and they're lecturing about reinforcement systems and condition. The, like the talk Jesus just gave about conditioned reinforcers is, fits in with this too. But it's like, how is, what is happening between the click and the treat, which is frequently described as a cl like that, that's a classical conditioning relationship because you're pairing them.

But the, the way that the clique is. What they're saying is, the way that the click is most effective is if it's a discriminative stimulus or a cue to do the behavior of collecting the treat. And that, that, that, that is, that stim, that the click is the cue that comes at the end of a whole of your chain.

Everything is a chain basically, and the click is the last cue in the chain. And we all know what happens when the last queue in the chain is for something that you don't know how to do very well, like things fall apart. And so, so I don't know. So that, those are all the things I've been thinking about, about classical conditioning.

And also going back to your point, it just like, the more you learn, the harder your job gets,

like the harder it is to go out and tell people stuff

because you're like, I need to do a year of research to make sure I'm right,

and then I need to figure out how to simplify it.

[00:42:39] Emily: I think the more you learn, the more granular your understanding becomes. And because all of those nuances exist and you're steeped in them, it becomes much harder to zoom back out again and figure out which of those nuances is actually impactful in terms of application. And which one of the, which ones of them are, are just like really good to know about.

And I think like, part of the reason, and I, I know I used, I brought this up in, in live at the ranch, so I know I'm telling you something you've already heard me say, but

[00:43:15] Kiki: I haven't finished it yet, 

[00:43:17] Emily: oh, okay, cool.

Maybe you haven't heard me say this yet. Even if people don't read the rest of Robert Sapolsky's book, behave, I think everybody who's interested in behavior should read the introduction because he says a lot of really important things in that introduction, one of which is these categories don't exist in reality.

We have, we create these categories to better, like learn them and break, tease them apart and like dig deeper into them. But in there, in reality, there's, there is no separation between classical and operant conditioning because all of the stuff is happening at the same time. And it's just how we're. Sort of looking at it and, and thinking about it and, and how we're analyzing it and what we care about and what our criteria are.

And so like, so it does, it is helpful to know those things. And also it doesn't necessarily have a practical application all the time because whether or not, the granular details, it, it might all look the same. But to your point, a lot of people misapply these techniques because they don't have enough of the nuance.

They're not, their knowledge isn't granular enough. And I'm not saying that as a criticism or a slight or a judgmentalism. Everybody's doing the best they can with the information and resources they have. And I will tell you that as we've been researching about the, to do, to create this classical conditioning course, there were things that I discovered that I remember having read before. And also I had completely forgotten that they existed because I'm so used to the dog training echo chamber that I had forgotten things that to me actually really matter in terms of like, do you even know what your criteria are? Like what are the differences in what you're trying to do? And, and so like I do think that we do need more of it than we're currently getting in this industry, which is why Allie and I are teaching this course.

And also we're really grappling with how much more is actually pragmatic. How much more do we actually need, but. But yes, you're absolutely right. There are so many things that you said that I was just like, thanks for pitching our course for us, Kiki. But like, but I mean, one of the things that you said that I wanna circle back to is that idea of the reason to keep learners under threshold when we're working with them is so that we don't reinforce undesirable behavior. And Allie and I met at a sanctuary, which shall remain nameless that where we had over 400 dogs, many of whom had incredibly complex behavior issues. And so it was impractical or impossible to get them far enough away from the distressing stimuli to actually get them under threshold. And so we legitimately did have to start with just an associative counter conditioning.

Like I, I walked by, I chuck Chicken, I walked by, I chuck chicken. And because they were so in such a state of chronic toxic stress that they could not learn, they couldn't respond, they couldn't even take food, they couldn't even be close to you. And we did that knowing that we were going to be reinforcing undesirable behaviors. But we had to start with, let's just, let's just get to the point where you understand that when I walk by, chicken happens. And then when they made that association after a few repetitions of that. We would get their stress down enough that we could be like, okay, all those behaviors that I just accidentally reinforced, let's, let's teach you something else instead to get the same chicken. And then we could build relationships with them by, by doing, doing, doing that process. But I would not put a client's pet through that process because most dogs and cats don't exist in a space like that where they're

in intense, chronic, str toxic stress all the time and, and

it's 

impossible 

[00:47:22] Kiki: They also don't exist behind protected contact.

[00:47:25] Emily: and they don't exist

behind protected contact.

Right? That, so like that was an incredibly useful strategy for that environment. And also, I can't remember a time when I've had to replicate that outside of that environment,

right? I mean, like, well, there are a few shelters where I've had to replicate that, but again, high volume, chronic toxic stress, so outside of those contexts, and I think that it's really what, where this education comes in really handy and is really important is being able to make those decisions.

If I recognize that this is my context and therefore this is how I need to shift my strategy, and that is. That is the level that I think would be helpful in our industry. And, and one thing that I think you demonstrated beautifully is that it's not just about, if you're just thinking about what do I want this animal to do, or how do I want this animal to feel? You're not really listening to your learner. You're not taking into consideration what matters to them, what their reinforcers are in that moment, what their motivating operations are, what their concerns are, what the, what skills they lack that doesn't empower them to actually show up in that situation with, to en enabling them to make better choices.

Right? And so when you're just thinking about it as, what do I want from them? You're not including them in that learning process. And the reason I'm bringing that up is because that is one of the biggest criticisms that a BA receives is that it's, it's just manipulating behavior without including the learner.

And I think, I think that is, there are there that, that is, there are a lot of places where that has happened historically. I think there are less, but still many places where that is still happening. And also that is not where behavior analysis as a field is currently. Like what, what we know, what we're te not we, I'm not a behavioralist, but what we collectively humans know

and what behavior analysts are teaching.

And I think, and that's one of the reasons that I, I love what you do and I kind of creepy stop you all the time and, and pay attention to what you're doing because you do such a beautiful job of being like, this is behavior, an analysis. And also this is listening to our learners and including them in their own learning process and thinking about what matters to them.

And those two things are not mutually exclusive. This is

how I practice my, my profession. You know what I

mean? 

[00:49:59] Kiki: Yeah. I tend to think in terms of um, well, and I think like, I think at least I, I have never worked in human A, B, A and I don't wanna throw them under the bus. I really don't know what, other than reading research, which is not always how practice looks what, what people are doing. I, I see a lot of people in human A, B, A doing some really fantastic things.

But I also see a lot of people who are doing, who come from an a, b, a perspective in animal training, being in the forefront of like, the movement to uh, empower the learner and attend to how the learner feels and take and take into, but I mean, it is, it is sort of part and parcel of a BA to ask the learner why they are doing what they're doing before you try to change their behavior.

Now what you do with that information there's some bad, there's some bad shit. There's just like, there isn't anywhere else.

What you described really nails what I feel like is a struggle when I think that to make good, simple, to simplify things well, you need to know more than you say. But it is a real challenge to know then what to not, to not like fire hose people with everything that you know.

And I think Susan is a great model of that because she is, she is really refined this this course that teaches the basics. And she knows a lot more than she is gonna give you in that course. Although she does give you kind of a taste of it. On the flip side, I think it's, I, I think that taste of it is important because it lets you know that there is more to it.

Because I have heard people say things like, I understand how to do an A, B, C, and that's just too simple and it's not enough. And it's like, well, yeah, I mean, a lot of times it's not too simple, but sometimes you, sometimes it is too simple and you need you need a broader understanding of how behavior works than just like carrots and sticks, and there's this idea that operant conditioning is, is, is rewards and punishment is the quadrants or is whatever. And it is just it's just a lot more complicated than that within the, the field of understanding that we call operant conditioning or behavior analysis. Not, you don't have to, you don't have to go outside of that framework to find complexity.

But like, so for instance, like this, this, this thing where you you, you go up to the dog and you throw in a, you throw food in regardless of what they're doing. It's like, okay, but what, what is happening? Do we need to know why it's working?

And I think because we're doing a classical conditioning procedure, a lot of times people think it's working because of classical conditioning.

And there might be more stuff going on. Like, Erica Ocker has a study in, I think it was like 2020, about looking at desensitization first, separation anxiety. And it's not like a huge part of the article, but like part of it is a question like, desensitization is not a, it's not a learn, it's not a learning process, it's a procedure.

What makes it work? And her, what she was considering was it might be 'cause she has a whole line of research on owner, owner return or owner presence being a reinforcer or access to the owner being a reinforcer. Maybe when you do this desensitization procedure, it really looks identical to A-A-D-R-O procedure.

A differential reinforcement of other behavior procedure. And so maybe there, the reason that when it works there's an operant component and I mean, separation anxiety is a hard nut. And I think like that's one of the places where it would be beneficial to, look at other things besides what you think desensitization is like.

And even desensitization in the, I'm looking where the, the library book that I returned two years ago used to be the Volpe Desensitization procedure involved. If you look at what it actually was, it involved, yeah, it involves learning a, an operant muscle relaxation technique and then practicing it in the presence of gradated, is that a word?

Graduated, stimuli, approximations towards 

the, the big scary thing that you're worried about. And theoretically there's no reinforcement, like somebody's not giving you a cookie, but I'm sure there's reinforcement involved. Like

by, by being able to stand outside the auditorium, you may be contacting conditioned reinforcers like thinking like, oh, I might be able to public speak someday.

Or, the therapist is like, good job. See you next week, or whatever, or you get to leave. And so like, 

[00:54:45] Emily: all of those things are

true, but also like in my experience teaching hundreds of animals how to relax, I, I feel comfortable asserting that relaxation is its own reinforcer. I think what, I

mean, we could, we could argue about whether or not it's the, the good feeling that comes from relaxing or

I usually tell people it's relief.

It's relief from whatever the arousal was. The distress was. But

like, I like

relief is 

[00:55:12] Kiki: Your body feels better.

[00:55:13] Emily: your body feels better. So like I think the relaxation in and of itself is a reinforcer. I,

[00:55:18] Kiki: Yes. And that, that's another, that's another thing I've like, like to talk to my cabinet about a lot is, what are we teaching when we teach relaxation? Like, are we defining, we, are we defining relaxation by what it looks like? Or are we defining relaxation by its function?

Right. And that's, that's a behavior analysis, that's a thing that behavior analysis gave me is this language to talk about, like the, we categorize behavior in two ways, topographical or what it looks like and function which is what purpose does it serve?

And I think that more and more I think of relaxation as being, well, as being defined by the, out like the function, which is like, your mu like the way your muscles feel or rest or sleep or whatever. And then, yeah. So just because somebody's not rewording you doesn't mean that there's no reinforcement.

I was just talking to Hannah about this this morning because we were trying to figure out a good way to, to phrase it. Like, what do you call it when the behavior, like how do you explain to someone that reinforcement? Just because nobody is doing the reinforcing doesn't mean that there isn't reinforcement.

And the example I always use is when I sit in this chair from Wayfair my Wayfair office chair for too long, like, with my legs crossed to the right, like my back hurts and my butt hurts. And so I uncross my legs and I cross them the other way, and then my back feels better. And that's reinforcement.

It's just like, just happening all day, like gravity or whatever.

So

like, I think we could look at like, sorry, I'm blathering. Go ahead.

[00:56:55] Emily: No, no, no, no, no. You're okay. Also, there's like a little lag in Zoom, so I'm always talking over people. 'cause that's just how Zoom works. But I, I actually, this reminds me of a question. So in, in kind of nerding out and reading about the difference between like socially mediated reinforcers or consequences in general versus the other one I

have seen the, I've seen the other one called automatic mechanical and naturally occurring.

What, what, what is it actually called? What's the real

word for the one? That's

[00:57:26] Kiki: I, got a spiel on that. And then somebody else, like, I think, like, like I know Susan has disagreed with me on at least one thing, although I can't remember what it was right now, but, I have a talk about this because I think it's important that we talk about how to move to naturally occurring reinforcers because they are more likely to maintain behavior in the long term when there's nobody there to train.

Or sometimes, but it's confusing because sometimes the naturally occurring reinforcer is somebody giving you a cookie.

[00:57:53] Emily: Yeah, it's confusing. 

[00:57:54] Kiki: And I can't believe I've said cookie twice in the last 10 minutes because I hate that word for treats. But let's just pretend I'm talking about a literal cookie. 

But so, naturally occurring reinforcers, like I think it's helpful to think about the opposite pairs.

So there are naturally occurring reinforcers and there are contrived reinforcers.

Contrived reinforcers. And these are terms from like, textbook terms. A contrived reinforcer is a reinforcer that you are someone is using intentionally to teach

a naturally occurring reinforcer is what you expect to maintain that behavior outside of the teaching setting.

And then there are another opposite pair would be socially mediated and direct, let's say directly produced. So that's, that's a term I kind of, I don't think that one is a textbook term. But socially mediated means someone else is. You don't just get it directly. You ask someone for the salt and they give you the salt, versus you take the salt and then you have the salt.

And then those two, two pairs are not equivalent, like not all naturally occurring reinforcers are directly produced by doing the behavior. Some of them, when you say hi to someone and they say hi back to you, that is a naturally occurring reinforcer for saying hi to someone maybe.

But it is socially mediated.

and things get a little muddy because you might contrive the naturally occurring reinforcer to teach someone something. You might take your, I, I wouldn't do this, but you might take your dog up to the edge of the pond and then wait until they look at you to get access to the pond. You contrived that because you brought your dog there on a leash and you restricted them from getting to the pond.

And natural also doesn't mean like, call of the wild, natural, like arsenic, natural. It means. Just that, like the whole setting that you're in, where you get naturally occurring. Reinforcers could be very artificial. Like it might not be species typical or a primary reinforcer. It might just be that like, you know, if you're a dog and you live with people, you look at them to get to a lake

when you're near a lake, right?

So the behavior doesn't have to feel like it's the natural behavior that a, like that a dog would do to get to a lake by itself.

[01:00:16] Emily: right, right. Thank you for

explaining that because I was having a hard time getting clarity on those terms, so I appreciate you explaining that to me.

[01:00:26] Kiki: Paul, chance,

Paul Chance's book 

has a good, has a good section on it. He is also, was also a great disseminator, I think like lots of good, simple language.

[01:00:38] Emily: This is another example of, I can't tell you how many times I've read learning and behavior, and also I do not remember that section of the book, so I'm gonna have to go back and

view it. 

[01:00:47] Kiki: I don't remember. But you know, what has been, you know, what has been the best thing is to get textbooks through like, well, either A PDF that's searchable or uh, there's this thing I use called vital. Vital Source Bookshelf, I think it's called. And so I have like a couple of go-to textbooks in E Formm so that I don't have to like thumb through the index or remember where it was like I can just search for a keyword and bam.

[01:01:15] Emily: I wanna actually circle back because you mentioned DRO being like that, like Erica's paper about separation anxiety. Is it really just desensitization? 

[01:01:28] Kiki: Well, or what, or what is de what is happening when we do desensitization? Yeah.

[01:01:32] Emily: let's be real, a lot of times sy not even systematic desensitization is happening, but I, I'll say that I've never worked on a case of any kind of separation related behaviors where I have just used a classical approach. Like, there's always, there's always skills that I'm teaching.

I'm always, I always care about what behaviors the animal has available to navigate their own situation, like whatever's going on with them. Right? But it had never, I'd never really thought about it in terms of being a DRO. And I know that wasn't your d your thesis was on ds, right? Isn't that what you were doing?

[01:02:12] Kiki: I did a DRO in my thesis. Yeah.

[01:02:16] Emily: Okay. Can you, can you talk more about Ds? Because I, I'm in a situation like where, at the beginning of my learning, I thought I understood what they were and I've kind of fallen off, I've fallen off the Dunning Kruger cliff, and now I'm like, I have no idea what DRO is now. So me better understand it.

[01:02:33] Kiki: Yeah. So let's talk about the pieces of that. So, differential reinforcement is what the DR stands for. Differential reinforcement traditionally means reinforce this and not that. It has also the definition has expanded somewhat to mean, reinforce this more than that. And then there are a number of procedures that are called differential reinforcement of something.

So you can differentially, reinforce alternative behavior. That's kind of the, the let's replace behavior instead of suppressing it approach that I was talking about earlier. If your dog like just take a simple example. If your dog jumps when you come home to get petting, then you could when you come home, you could pet your dog when their feet are on the ground and you would be reinforcing a, an differentially reinforcing, an alternative to jumping that gets the same.

The gold standard is that it gets the same reinforcer, but you could, I think people also call it DRA sometimes when you reinforce with something else. So if your dog come home and your dog's got their feet on the floor and you put treat, you give them treats. There is a sort of a narrower category of DRA called DRI, which is differential reinforcement of incompatible behavior.

So that's an alternative behavior that you can't do at the same time as the alternative behavior. And that's often advisable because obviously because then you can't do. You could lay down and bark at the same time, but you can't hold a toy in your mouth and bark at the same time. And then there's, you can go on from there.

There's other, those are like sort of the most common ones. There's also like differential reinforcement of high rates or low rates of behavior. There's differential reinforcement of successive approximations with just shaping where you re start to reinforce what things that are more like what you want and don't reinforce as much for things that are lower in the list of approximations.

And then there is differential reinforcement of other behavior, and it is really, shouldn't even be called differential enforcement. Um, So differential reinforcement of other behavior sounds like basically should mean the same thing as DRA, except that you don't care what the other, what the alternative behavior is anything but the A, B, B, anything but barking.

Right.

But weirdly, that's not what it's it is it's a procedure where the delivery of reinforcement is not contingent on any specific behavior. It is contingent on the absence of a particular behavior or class of behaviors for a certain amount of time.

So if you. If the problem is barking for the most, I think the most, the, the probably most effective type of, there's, there's, and then there's also different kinds of DRO.

There's momentary DRO, which it just seems like almost a non procedure. It's basically like, at the end of the, at the end of the interval of time, you look up, they're not doing the behavior. You reinforce. It doesn't matter if they did it somewhere in that interval. If they're not doing it at that moment, you reinforce, and I think that probably we could go into a whole thing about how, what's actually happening there and why does that work or not work.

But the kind of DRO that I used in my thesis, the way it works is there's an interval of time that passes. If the behavior that you don't want doesn't occur within that time, you deliver reinforcement. If it does occur, you start the time over.

And so there is a lot of question about whether DRO even is a reinforcement procedure because you're not increasing, because you're not targeting a particular behavior to increase and. Almost nobody takes data on whether they did increase any particular behavior. In fact, there's, there's a paper on DRO that I really like where they, they suggest they did, they did this in a couple of experiments.

There's, there's, I think there's two papers that I know of where they, they were like take data on the O in DRO. Like what, what's actually happening? So the way that DRO is thought to work is that it might work by hang on, let me find my, I i, I have notes on this. So for, for possible mechanisms.

One satiation just basically that usually when you do a DRO, you start with really low criteria. And so if you keep presenting this, the thing that the learner wants, like on a schedule that where they're, it's so dense that they are really not doing much of that behavior, then they get satiated or it works it, like Susan said this really well, she said different DRO without extinction is non-contingent reinforcement, which means, which non-contingent reinforcement is where.

Oh, I see you're behaving for, I see you're barking to get tennis balls. Here's a hundred tennis balls. Here you go.

Like, so, so DRO might work that way, at least at the beginning. It might also work as kind of a, a extinction. So it, well, it might work, let's say, let's back up. It might work by weakening the dependent relationship between the problem behavior and the thing that's reinforcing it.

And that's what, and non-contingent reinforcement does it Like, it, it, it's like, okay, well tennis balls come whether I do this behavior or not, so why am I bothering with this behavior? Like, why am I bothering barking? It doesn't have anything to do with when tennis balls come. Right.

So it might work that way.

It it also might work through, through extinction where the reinforcer doesn't come when the behavior happens. So in, in A DRO when they bark, you reset the clock and they don't, they also don't get what they were barking to get. And then it might. Work. It might be negative punishment, it might be that there is a signal, there's some kind of signal, like they see you resetting the clock and that means they're not getting their thing.

I mean, really it might be like a condition positive. I mean, it might be a PO positive Punisher. There's a signal that says, Nope, you're not getting it. So, but then there are also people who argue that not responding in and of itself is a very broad response class that can be reinforced, like we might call it waiting,

Right,

Like we might call that class of responses waiting. Like, what do I do when the bus isn't coming? I sit, I pace I tap my pen on my hand, I chew on my lip, and and I do, I do all those things and then the bus comes, and so it might be that it's just a really big class of behaviors that gets reinforced when the, when the timer goes off and you get your, you get what you're getting.

So a lot of people think that DRO is a really shitty procedure. Because it's not a reinforcement procedure and it can be very slow because you're not targeting any, you're not helping the animal learn what to do. You're just not reinforcing for doing, not doing the thing for a certain amount of time.

They also think it might work. I think that evidence has shown that it doesn't work this way, but it might work because when the timer goes off, the behavior you're doing when the timer goes off gets reinforced. But that wasn't my experience. And some of the studies where they took data on the other behavior didn't seem like that was probably the, the way I was working.

That said, I think that, so, so the idea is ODRA is better because you are actually teaching them what to do.

And I think that that is generally true, but the specific situation that I was trying to work on was when you have accidentally taught your dog to bark at you to get food or to get cues that lead to food while you are trying to do something else.

So I think we've all experienced this where we were like, okay I'm, I'm gonna need to work for an hour. I need to eat dinner with my guests. And I want, I don't want the dog to bark at me or jump on the table. So what am I gonna reinforce instead,

get on a mat, right? Like 

build, build, that mat behavior with a hy of reinforcement and then thin it out.

And what often happens is you get to about 10 seconds of duration, and then you get distracted because you're talking to your guest or you're actually doing something, you're on Zoom, and the dog's like, Hey,

it has been 10 seconds, right? So you accidentally extinguish the little duration, ten second stay that you taught.

And then the dog goes back to what was working before, right? Or they go back to things that dogs do to get food. Maybe in other situations,

stare at you. Steam up your tail, and so when COVID hit, like people were really struggling because they, nobody ever worked on Zoom for eight.

I didn't even know what Zoom was. 

Nobody ever teleconferenced for eight hours before. So, and dog trainers in particular, I think. Two of my subjects were, two of my participants were dog trainers, and one was like a dog enthusiast, like a hobby trainer. 

Like we didn't train for that either,

I had done the procedure a couple times with dogs. I had done this procedure a couple times in other situations where the dog was like barking at the human while they're, like, they had guests like not barking at the guests, not a problem with the guests, but like had learned like, if I bark at you, you will get my mat out and keep feeding me.

And the first thing I did was say, oh, well we have to build duration. And so this wonderful client built like 15 minutes of duration on the dog, laying on the mat and staring at her while she had guests. And I, and I went back and I was like, good job. And also, what have I done? 

Like, what have I just taught you?

This is obviously not what you want either. 

Like who wants this? So, so I was like, I was thinking about

like how do, how, how can we teach the dog when things are available and when they're not?

And that, and so that gets into a whole other area of research called multiple schedules, which I won't get into here, but the multiple schedules, all you need to know is that a multiple schedule is two, two reinforcement schedules in a row, each of which is signaled by a queue.

There's a queue that says reinforcement schedule is now this. And then for a dog, they have to learn that through experience. And then when this signal is up, the reinforcement schedule is this. And the, the thing about reinforce multiple schedules is that they are really good at turning behavior on and off without, like, after they're learned, without the learner having to contact consequences.

Like you, you just, you see the store is closed because there's a sign on it and you don't bother trying to open the door.

So I was like, how can we teach the dogs that the, when you're on Zoom, the store is closed when they already think it's open. When, when this base, when the picture of you sitting there and talking on Zoom or you eating dinner or whatever, they've already learned that that means the store is open

and like.

So that was the goal. And I picked DRO because I can't monitor what the, the dog is doing during that time. And it seems, and also like if you were gonna be on the phone for 20 minutes, you wouldn't tell your kid, all right, sit on that stool for 20 minutes and then I will give you attention.

Like, you'd be like, you'd be like, do anything except set the house on fire and I will be with you in 20 minutes.

And so I felt that it was fair and also like the appropriate approach for that

issue. And the other thing that I really was hot on is the idea of that signal. Like if you just ran a DRO without changing anything in the environment, it basically looks like the store is open, but it's not. And that's super frustrating.

Like there was a restaurant across the street from me like that, like the, all the lights would be on, and I'd be like,

I just, and like this is their normal hours and for some reason the door is locked and it's 'cause we're leaving to go see fish or whatever.

So, so, so I wanted to see if having this, having a signal.

That that we, that was new that we put into place and then we taught the dog the rules with that signal there.

Like would that make it like maybe faster for the dog to learn, like, okay, when that's when that scarf is on the back of your chair and barking doesn't work.

And then we used what they wanted the food to reinforce like increasing durations of doing nothing.

And what was really interesting is that unlike a kid when you're on the phone, like the dogs, dogs don't really have that many choices of what to do unless maybe like they can go out and you have a doggy door or something. So what most of them did, and I also thought this might be species, typical behavior, is that they, they ended up going to sleep,

which I think, as we talked about before, has its own reinforcers, like sleeping, like the reinforcer for resting is sleep.

Something I, something I, I think I learned from Kira Moore who works for me doing separation anxiety cases, like they treat, like the behavior. She's a behavior analyst who had specialized in sleep stuff.

And she said that they, what they work on is the be reinforcing is the behaviors of going to sleep. Like getting into bed and closing your eyes and doing, you know, doing stuff that will put you to sleep. And then the reinforcer for those behaviors is sleep. Yeah. So all of these dogs ended up going to a dog bed, even though they were never in, in their early parts of stay.

They were never on the dog bed or anything when, well, actually one of the dogs totally didn't work with so, but the two dogs, the two dogs that did it, one of them laid down under the table and the other one went to a dog bed that they had never been on when a timer went off. That's, that's the one I remember the best is that case because it was like the cleanest win.

But I also, the, my study did not like conclusively demonstrate that the signal made a difference. 'cause I didn't compare it really to anything. I did do a little test without the signal and it seemed like there was, for one of the dogs there was an effect. And for the other one, I think the routine of that we were using, probably acquired control,

but, but ideally you kind of want, it's not just naturally occurring reinforcers.

You want, you also want naturally occurring cues. Like you want the dog to do the behavior, you want the dog to read the room. So like, if, if the person just doing, being on Zoom, or in one case it was like eating, eating food. Becomes the cue and you don't need the scarf. Great.

That's 

kind of what you want.

So, but I can't, I still can't say if, like using a signal would speeds it up or causes less frustration because I didn't directly test for that. But that is my, that is my guess, just based on like my, my experience as a human.

If, if one, if the elevator you normally take upstairs to your job is out of order and there's no sign that says it's out of order, you are just, you are gonna do a lot of extinction related behavior.

You're gonna push the buttons, you're gonna kick, you're gonna swear you're gonna call the manager. But if somebody puts up a sign that says The elevator's not working, you're not gonna,

You're

you're, you're gonna try to find another way. And it would also maybe be nice if there was a sign that said there's elevator around the corner.

But like,

but even if there's not, like, you, if you, you have a repertoire of like taking other elevators and walking upstairs, it's probably not gonna be that, not gonna be as annoying as if the elevator just isn't working and there's nothing to tell you that it's not working and it, that it isn't just very slow today.

[01:18:49] Emily: So that is interesting. Thank you for explaining that. I would like help with some real world examples because you mentioned an email kind of in passing, a lot of people think they're doing a DRO when really they're just doing DRA with lots of a's like lots of alternative behaviors.

Then that kind of blew my mind because I was like, oh, I think that's me. I think you're talking about me

because so, so I'm gonna contrast between something that I, I know for sure is something that I do that is DRA with lots of A's

and something that I thought was DRO, but I'm actually now not at all.

Sure. And I would love your help with this.

So what I, my favorite kind of go-to protocol that I teach people when they need their dog to just leave them alone while they're working. We call it at Pet Harmony. We call it at the anywhere but here protocol where, and, and we do have a shaping plan for this because we often have to teach dogs how to do this in approximations.

They don't know how to do it on their own. But the end goal is we, we kind of hide little activity centers around the house and the dog has to first find the activity centers and then engage with them in, in whatever way. And, and we've got lots of permutations of what this looks like based on what our goal, our behavioral goals are for the dog. To me, that very clearly sits in DRA with lots of as, right? Because I don't care which ones those dogs do. I don't even really care part, particularly how they engage with those activity centers. I don't care the order in which they do them. I just wanna give them lots of opportunities to do literally anything other than stare at me, p me, bark at me while I'm on Zoom.

Right? It, so am I, first of all, am I correct that that is DRA with lots of As or is that something else

[01:20:33] Kiki: Let me ask you, what happens if they do come bark at you?

[01:20:36] Emily: that we have a the Q for like go go find your activity centers and, people get to make up their own cue. So I don't, I, I don't make people use a, a very specific cue, but we remind dogs you have other things to do.

[01:20:50] Kiki: I mean, I don't know. I might not call it differential reinforcement if, well, I, I suppose it could be differential reinforcement because when they come to you, so there's also the idea that you don't need extinction for differential reinforcement.

Right. Traditionally differential reinforcement was reinforce this, extinguish that.

but but there are some really great advances in thinking about that, where it's like, well, if we have matching law, like why do we have to do that? Why, why can't we just reinforce this one less, less good? So I think the dog comes to you and they get like a little bit of attention. They get a conditioned reinforcer, like, your thing is over there, or whatever.

Or maybe it's, who knows? Maybe it's a, a mal mouth punisher, but you're, I think it's probably just like a, a weak reinforcer. Like they come over to you and you go, you point them in the right direction, who knows? We'd need the data to know, like, is coming to you,

like, is coming to you decreasing?

And then if it is decreasing, is it because that consequences, is that consequence decreasing it or is it just that they've gotten better at finding their own stuff and that stuff has therefore become more reinforcing? Who knows? But yeah, I would say there are a number of cues in the environment for things to do that will produce reinforcers directly by doing them not from you.

So, but they are specific activities. Then yeah, I'd say that's probably like a form of DRA, the, the. The real thing to ask yourself is, is it time-based? And if it's not time-based, it's not DRL.

So I think that's the discrimination, but gimme another example.

[01:22:22] Emily: so I think I, I think you just answered my second one, but I'm gonna say it anyway 'cause I

wanna make sure. I had an eclectic parrot named Bayou who passed away last year. I had him

for 17 or 18 years. I'm not gonna go into his whole, he had a very complicated history and his behaviors were pretty complicated. I'm, I'm gonna, I hope I don't need to go into all of that, but for reasons. He would do a thing where he, he would step up on me and he would be comfortable and cozy and fine. And then all of a sudden his, like eyelids would go flat. And I knew he was about to bite me.

Like the eyelids going flat, told me he's about to bite me. There are reasons that I, after many years of doing descriptive assessments of this behavior, I, I felt strongly that his reasons for doing so had to do with like internal state stuff, not external stimuli.

So the way that I responded to that was what I thought was A DRO, which is when his eyelids would go flat, I would immediately reinforce him for literally anything other than biting me. If you look at my arm, you get reinforced. If you turn away from my arm, you get reinforced. If you stand up straight, you get refor. Like anything

he would do, and I would just keep doing that until his eyelids would relax and go back to round again.

[01:23:38] Kiki: I think that's DRA.

[01:23:39] Emily: is that A DRO or is That's D-R-A-D-R-A with

lots of a 

[01:23:44] Kiki: Yeah. And there's, there's, there's some, like, so a, a few years ago I gave a presentation about sort of like choosing better alternative behaviors, like just sort of like, that was the gimmicky title, but it was about how do you decide on targets? Like how do you decide what the alternative behavior is gonna be?

And one of the things I talked about that I still think about a lot, like it was one of those things where like making the presentation, it kind of helped, it gel for me a little more. But that that if you have multiple alternatives that have been reinforced in a particular situation, what that helps with is the technical terms, which I'll explain are not for you, but for the audience, is extinction and resurgence.

So if you have one of the problems with DRA especially if. You are not using the, if you're not using the thing as a reinforcer that the animal was behaving to get, like maybe your parrot was biting you to get away from some internal pain or something that you didn't, couldn't identify the origins of, I don't know, I'm just guessing, but like, and you're reinforcing the other behaviors with food, if you don't do that, the old contingency is still there.

The old like, oh, if, if I'm feeling this pain and if I bite, it might go away. And so one of the problems with can be with DRA is that when you, if you forget to reinforce the alternative behavior, even if actually, even if the function is the same, even if the alternative behavior gets them the same thing, but it doesn't work now animals don't just do nothing.

Humans also don't just do nothing. You, you try other stuff that has worked in the same situation. And that phenomenon is called resurgence. Like in other, in other fields it's called things like relapse or, regression or whatever. It just, you go back to stuff that has worked in the past and a really interesting area that, that I think needs, needs further study is how, what determines what you go back to and they don't.

We don't know exactly if it's what has been reinforced the most, what you learned first, what you got reinforced for most recently. It might be any one of those things in a given situation. And we don't know all the variables that decide that, but there's probably an order to it. But the, the thing that I think is helpful to know this is the boil down, is they're gonna do something else that has been reinforced in this similar situation.

So

if you have reinforced multiple other things in this situation, then when the first alternative doesn't work, they might not be as fast to go back to biting you,

right? So they might try turning their head and then walking away and then walking further away. Or they might, they might try before they bark at you again.

They might try sitting and lying down and then putting their chin on their hands really cute, and then looking it up and looking at you and then going and then barking, right? So, so they're gonna go through that list of things that have worked in this similar situ in this situation, or ones kind of like it in the past.

The best example I have of this is this great client I had once who I was trying to explain this concept to her. Like, why are we teaching your dog sit and look, why are we teaching your dog these behaviors that don't seem to have anything to do with my problem? And I was like, we wanna build some repertoire or some things you can ask him for.

So that and that you, that you reinforce in this situation so that if one of them doesn't work, maybe he'll try another one before he goes back to this. And she said, oh, she was like really big in aa and like

she um, she was like, I used to drink and I quit drinking, and then I quit smoking, and then I quit dairy.

And when I get stressed, I might go back to dairy. I've had a cigarette, but I've never gone back to drinking. And she is like, I have like these multiple, you know, there's multiple behaviors she does to, to like alleviate stress or whatever. And, and if you have dairy to go back to, like, maybe you won't, now I'm not saying it's ideal, but like 

[01:27:57] Emily: no, that's, that's just a really good Analogy or like comparison, but I love that she came up with that.

Yeah. 

[01:28:04] Kiki: Yeah. And you could also like call your sponsor you, you know, you, the more things that you have that you can do, right? If your elevator's not working. There's two other elevators and stairs and like, maybe a rock climbing wall or whatever.

I don't know, like, 

Depending on your repertoire, like you might not go back to kicking the elevator, go to kicking the elevator or leave so fast. You might try some other

things.

[01:28:31] Emily: The more tools you have in your toolbox, the, the less likely you're

gonna go back to just like, I mean, and also I think it like helps animals be more creative in their own problem solving too. 'cause I've seen animals who have a really large repertoire of behaviors when they're in a new situation where they're stuck.

I've seen them sort of like combine two or three different

behaviors that we hadn't previously taught together in order to solve the problem in front of

them. 

[01:29:00] Kiki: The banana box. The banana box.

[01:29:03] Emily: Yeah.

Yes, 

exactly. 

[01:29:05] Kiki: Yeah. Just to tell people what that is there's an, an old experiment with chimps curler Kohler. I, I think I learned to say that name from like a documentary that was made when people spoke, like they spoke in the seventies, like in a documentary like NFL film style.

But famous experiment. Epstein and Skinner, not that Epstein. Robert Epstein. Well, you know, now he is been associated with Chomsky, so gotta be specific here. 

Yeah, like, so, Skinner and his graduate student, Robert Epstein, did this series of uh, experiments called the Colo Simulations, where they looked at behaviors that, like in chimps, for example, had been attributed to cognition or insight or things like that.

And they said, we think you're overlooking learning history. Like these chimps had experience with these behaviors and these behaviors and these behaviors. And then you put them in an environment that called for them to combine them. And and so they did it with a pigeon. It was like, it's a classic uh, experiment where they teach the pigeon to push a box around with its beak by, by knocking it with its beak, like not a normal maybe pigeon behavior to do,

but they train it and they also train the pigeon to peck this little banana that's hanging from the ceiling.

Well actually they, I don't know if it's hanging from the ceiling originally, but they tr taught it to peck this banana toy to get a treat. And it was like, because the chimp there's a banana hanging out of reach and the chimp gets a stick and gets the banana down. And they say that the cause of this behavior is that the chimp has special higher order cognition.

'cause it's close to humans and it's, so it has this insight like, oh, I could use this stick to, and that causes the behavior. And so they gave the pigeon these repertoires of pecking a box mo shoving a box around standing on the box and pecking this banana. And then they put the pigeon in a box with the box over on one side and the banana on the ceiling on the other side.

And the pigeon, there's video of it on YouTube that you can see where the pigeon is like looking at the banana and then looking at the box and then like looking at the banana and then looking at the box. And then it like knocks the box over. It stands up on the box, it kind of sees if it can reach, it doesn't hops off, pushes the box further, and then gets on the box and picks the banana.

And

Epstein made kind of a whole career out of that. That the idea that new behavior comes from old behavior,

right? That, 

It, it comes from having repertoires and then the environment that calls for those repertoires, which it sounds exactly like what you're describing.

[01:31:44] Emily: yeah. And I think it's kind of cute slash funny that they were like, see, chimps are more like humans because they can do this like creative problem solving. And it's like my darlings, humans can't do creative problem solving of creative problem solving unless we also have a, a, a learning history.

Like we're not better at that than other species. We also draw from our learning history to come up with new, new ideas. Right.

[01:32:15] Kiki: Yeah. Yep. 

[01:32:16] Emily: That's delightful. I just realized I have, I've kept you past the time that I promised you

that we would be done by. So, before, before we, we end the interview, I, I have a series of questions that I love to ask everybody, and I would love to hear your answers. The

first is, what are our observable goals and actionable items that people can take away from everything we've discussed today?

[01:32:40] Kiki: Let's see. One would be that if you are doing a procedure where you are making one stimulus, predict another, watch what's happening all around those two stimuli, what happens to behavior that comes before that pairing? What happens to behavior that occurs between the two stimuli? Like, like. The way I've talked about this in, in my talk was that mind the gap.

Like look at what's, look at what's happening, and then also to think about describing what you're doing versus what you think you're doing. Like I'm, I'm making this stimulus come two seconds before this stimulus and not I'm doing classical conditioning because it will, that'll be your cue to look at more stuff that might be influencing the behavior that you're interested in.

Let's see. And then for the DRO thing, the thing that I, I didn't necessarily get to say is that the way I did things in my thesis is not probably the first approach I would take to that. Now, like now, the thing I've been more into lately is where does the behavior that I want the dog to do

while I'm on Zoom already exists

and can I get it? Can I put it on a queue there that captures it with its naturally occurring reinforcers and then bring that queue into my situation because it's much faster. In the little bit of that, I've done a lot faster than. And I, I also wanna just uh, give a shout out to Jesus Rosales Ruiz for it.

Almost all of the things that I'm talking about. There's some nugget that started with something he said or presented on. So he has a talk called Don't Fight Extinction. That was my idea for, oh, could I put something in the environment to signal the new contingencies so that it doesn't just look like the store is closed and the store is open and you're rattling the door.

I don't think that was actually what he meant. I actually think that what he meant was to do what I'm talking about now, just takes me a while to, to find the behavior where it exists. Figure out what's queuing it there, or, or, or, or put get it on under stimulus control by something there that you can then transition into your problem environment.

But I think sometimes you can't do that. Like sometimes you have to work in the problem environment, like what you were talking about with the kennels.

So, so like, I guess my takeaway there is like, don't take this procedure I just barely described and run with it because it, like, it took like eight sessions.

It's not, it's, and it didn't work with one dog. Like, just, there's more to it. 

DRO If you are a person who needs to know the difference between DRO and DRA, that the, the, remember the thing to remember is DRO is time-based, not behavior-based.

[01:35:32] Emily: that is helpful. Thank you.

[01:35:34] Kiki: and I think that new behavior comes from old behavior is a real handy thing to remember as well, right?

It, it informs so many cool things including like shaping, right? Like if you're shaping and you get stuck, like let's say you're shaping your dog to lay down on a mat and they just aren't, you know, you've been reinforcing the sit for a while, you're putting a treat on the mat and the dog is not laying down.

I think the real reason that a dog offers down on the mat when you're doing that is that they have some history already of getting a treat for laying down. If they don't have that, then when you slow down on reinforcing sit, they're not just gonna magically lie down. It's not that sit always leads to down, it's that probably their learning experience before you get to the mat is that there's certain behaviors you do when there's food around to get the food, 

right. So. Like you can, you can take that behavior, you can go get that behavior where it exists. You can teach the dog that it's something you can do to get food, and then you bring them back to the mat and you slow down on sit and magic they lay down. 

So yeah, new behavior comes from old behavior. Doesn't, doesn't just come from somewhere else.

It comes from, comes from old behavior plus the environment that calls for it.

[01:36:51] Emily: Yeah. I love that. That's a, that's a good take home point. What is one thing you wish people knew about either this topic, your profession, or enrichment? You get to choose.

[01:37:02] Kiki: I don't know, I don't know if I can answer that one. I feel like maybe I already kind of covered a lot of things I wish people knew

and that they're,

some of them are, some of them are similar to the, to the uh, takeaway point. 

[01:37:15] Emily: Yeah, I accept that, that, I mean, that is true. You gave us multiple take home points, and I think they definitely qualify. 

All right. What is one thing you'd love to see improved in your field?

[01:37:26] Kiki: I know you sent me these ahead of time. I should have probably thought about the answers to them before I got here.

[01:37:30] Emily: It's

okay. 

[01:37:31] Kiki: Improved in our field.

I would like more trainers to say what they do,

just describe their actual procedures and take it out of whatever framework they're coming in. Like, I feel like I see a lot of things that are like, and I think part of this is probably trying to protect your, not to give everything away for free on the internet, but like, which I support not doing that, but like if you tell me you're doing like the, the answer to this is classical conditioning or the answer to this is teaching the dog to regulate its nervous system.

I don't know what to do to, I don't know. I don't know what, how to do that. Like even things like, I use positive reinforcement, use clicker training, use counter conditioning, the devil's in the details.

So I, when I put stuff out in the world, I try, maybe not always, I'm sure I'm not perfect at it, but I try to just say what I'm doing as well as why, like, but even if I didn't say why someone who understood behavioral principles could figure out then why my thing worked or didn't work.

They could take it and they could make something of their own that was different for a different case.

But you can't do that with stories. Like you can't, story stories can be important in getting people on board causing people to feel a certain way or commit to something, but they also get in the way of like, some kinds of stories get in the way of like figuring out what to do.

So, so I have like a little motto, like, just say what you do, and obviously that's not enough.

Like if you don't know the principles that make what you do work there's, there's more you could like, it's like ideally you wanna connect what you're doing to sound principles. Like here's what I'm doing and here's why I think it works. But if you're only gonna do one of those, like give us the procedure.

Because someone who knows principles can then figure out maybe why it works or why it doesn't work. And someone who just needs to follow your recipe because that's the stage they're at, can do, knows what to do in what order to do it. I'm not saying it's ideal to just follow recipes, but I think we all have been at that stage in our career where we learn about stuff by follow recipes first.

[01:39:50] Emily: Well, I mean, y yes. I think the difference is when you, when you're learning a procedure, you have to learn step by step how to do that procedure.

So like in that regard, we're all using recipes where recipes can become harmful. If it is, if you're handling it, like if resource guarding this procedure, if

separation, anxiety, this procedure, right?

So like the, you do need a recipe for the procedures to know, 'cause you, like you said, the devil's in the details to do them well. You have to know what each step looks like. And also that's not, you're not making behavior change decisions based on the recipe. You're making a decision about what behavioral principles we need to be leveraging, and then you use a protocol that leverages those behavioral principles. So I, I, I agree with you. I, I definitely understand what you're saying and I think that's a really um, important thing because yeah, like on our websites, we shouldn't go into a big, long explanation of what things look like for multiple reasons. But when it comes to like actually explaining what we do, we should be able to explain what we do in terms of behavioral principles, not like I use this protocol because it's the magical one and it's the best.

And if you're not doing it, you're not a good trainer. Like that's. That's not what, what this should look like. Right. So,

Yeah,

I, I, I get it. I think we're very

aligned in, in that regard.

[01:41:16] Kiki: Maybe I should modify it from not, it's not just say what you do, but it is say what you do,

To, to, to describe what you actually do versus saying, I mean, I don't know. This was going around. I'm not a horse person. There was like a thing going around that someone called my attention to the other day where there's a horse trainer who is leading a horse up to food, and then when it takes a bite, whipping it, and the voiceover is about like, or the, the, it's described as like teaching the horse to relax around food, you know, to regulate, to whatever.

Like, there's all this language and it's like you just turn off the thing and look at what the person is doing and then you can connect that to behavioral principles.

But w when somebody's watching who doesn't know behavioral principles, it's real easy to like persuade them to, I mean, it just, we don't have to talk about people in our, we could talk about Caesar Milan, we could talk about dominance.

Like, oh, I am, I'm creating a calm, submissive state. You know, I'm projecting energy. I am, you know, it's the same, it's the same no matter what corner it's coming from. It's just not, it obscures what's happening. You have to know what the procedure is to be able to tie it to principals.

[01:42:38] Emily: yes. I mean, and I think that ev it even goes beyond our industry of like, there's a long and storied history of humans taking a concept that is actually like really good, ethical, effective, supportive, whatever, and then. Slapping that term onto a totally different procedure, which is not in any way ethical, effective, supportive, whatever, but because they're calling it the same thing, they attract the people who want that thing. And so like, and that's not just a thing in our industry. I think that's everywhere. And also, I don't think that everybody's doing that intentionally. I think one of the drawbacks of, I mean, one of the reasons that we built the mentorship program is because when you don't have the entire learning cycle, that includes giving feedback from a teacher on your efforts at doing something, the outcome of that is that what you think you're doing and what you're actually doing are, are very different things.

And you're not being intentionally misleading. You just haven't learned how to do what you think you're doing. And, and so like, it's not all slimy and unethical, but it is something that is very common, not just in our industry, but just in general, humans trying to emulate something that started out really beautifully.

It, it does get sloppy and messed up when we're not being very clear about what that actually should look like.

Yeah. Yeah.

Beautiful. Okay.

Final question. What are you currently working on? If people want to work more with or learn from you, where can they find you?

[01:44:10] Kiki: I this year I have taken on like more KPA work. Then I have even in previous years. So I have a few, like if you wanna learn from me, like on a real granular basis, that's like a good way to do it.

And then I am working on a couple of talks for Clicker Expo. One is about loosely sch walking from the, the component skills perspective that we just talked about. Loosely sch walking as a suite of skills that you can teach individually and then get drawn on in a, as the environment calls for them.

And not, I'm gonna have a lab as well. Might be, this might come out after clicker Expo, but, those talks are usually available on video later. So, and then I'm also gonna talk there about some, some of the sort of clicker training, some of the things that we've been saying about how clicker training works for a long time.

I'm kind of question uh, if those are still how the vanguard, if those are, how the Vanguard is talking about those things. Sort of like, I mean, I don't wanna step on Jesus's toes. He is gonna have a whole talk about it, but I might, I'll mention like, like the, what is the click doing,

Is it most useful to think of it as a conditioned reinforcer?

Do animals not learn when we lure? Um, Do I should call it the descriptions? But anyway, I'm, I'm kind of, is, is the, is the pairing of the clicker and the, and the treat a classical conditioning thing, is that the most useful way to think about it? Stuff like that. 

I help teach LLA. The next session of that is in July. Like you, I am working on a course that will be part of the I'm actually doing it for Behavior Works. It will be part of Zoo School and of the KPA behavior modification program. Um, And it's just a, a, a module on functional assessment.

So people can, and that will have like a live teaching component like yours will, I assume.

And I also like uh, you know, I have, I'm like, I, I have clients and stuff. Not as many, not as many fit into that as used to as they used to. uh, But I also do some work, consulting with other trainers you often by Zoom.

[01:46:25] Emily: Busy person doing, doing lots of things.

[01:46:27] Allie: I hope you enjoy today's episode and if there's someone in your life who also needs to hear this, be sure to text it to them right now. If you're a pet parent looking for more tips on enrichment, behavior modification, and finding harmony with your pet, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Harmony training. If you're a behavior or training professional dedicated to enrichment for yourself, your clients, and their pets, check us out on TikTok and Instagram at Pet Harmony Pro.

As always, links to everything we discussed in this episode are in the show notes. Thank you to Ellen Yoakum for editing this episode and making us sound good. Our intro music is from Penguin Music on Pixa Bay. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. That helps more pet lovers and professionals find us so they can bring enrichment into their world too.

Thank you for listening, and here's to harmony.