My First Poisoned Cue

A poisoned cue. Poison! The word itself is gives me negative feelings. All I can think of is Indiana Jones, in The Temple of Doom, in the beginning of the movie, when he was poisoned and needed the antidote to stay alive.

 Never would I have thought that I had poisoned a cue. I was sure that all of my cues were squeaky clean. After all I am very intentional and careful of what behaviors I put on cue. Easy to perceive and transfer to Norman, my five-year-old border collie.

I recently learned about poisoned cues in my training with KPA. A poisoned cue is a training signal (verbal, sound, or physical) that a dog has learned to associate with unpleasant, scary, or confusing experiences rather than rewards, leading to hesitation, avoidance, or refusal to perform a behavior. I’m five months into my training at KPA and haven’t stumbled onto a cue that Norman didn’t perform fluently that was put on cue – visual and vocal, or show any stress while performing a particular behavior, until last night.

I have been learning about opposite behaviors. Left vs Right, Over vs Under, Up vs Down etc. One of my exercise’s is train an opposite pair of behaviors. I must demonstrate this in my upcoming workshop. Norman already has a solid understanding of left vs. right, so I decided to work on Take it and Leave it.

We have worked on leave it years ago when he was a puppy. As I look back, the leave it cue and the behavior has never really been ever strengthened or generalized. Norman spent his first year and a half living in Brooklyn. Before I was introduced to clicker training, I was taking him to a local trainer and she taught me behaviors like “touch”, “leave it”, and the basic beginner behaviors like “sit” and “down” etc. Looking back during that time and the walks Norman and I did together, if there was something yucky on the sidewalk, I would cue Leave it! A stern, concerned vocal cue – more like a command. Do this now! I was terrified he’d eat those chicken wing bones. Leave it, Norman! I’d yelp. And then a tug on the leash. Not really waiting if he would perceive the cue at all. A tug and then a treat but no clicks and no verbal markers either. I wasn’t reinforcing anything except confusion and a negative association to the cue.

What I know now what I didn’t know then, is that the cue leave it probably meant to Norman:

1. a tug on the leash was coming.

2. No sniffs

And on my part:

1. Missed marked opportunities, from all the other distractions he WAS not interested in, and inconsistent reinforcement.

Today, I’d say that Norman knows the leave it cue, but his behavior in response to the cue varies to the antecedent of the environment.

Example 1: Norman and I are quietly sitting on the deck and a family of deer walk onto the property. He looks at me, and I cue “leave it” and he stays next to me only to watch the deer foraging a meal in our back field. I praise and cuddle and a game of fetch is expected. The antecedent to Norman’s environment is a quiet, safe place. His body is loose, and he is in a relaxed down position. Also, watching movement of the deer is very reinforcing to him. The behavior and how he understands the cue, in this context, is do not chase the deer. The bottom line is to stay.

Example 2: We are on a walk and Norman picks up a scent trail. He follows the scent to a decaying bird. I cue “leave it”. Do not put that in your mouth or get too close to it is what I mean, but I question, in this context, how Norman perceives the cue. He sniffs, but does not put the bird in his mouth. I am also putting tension on the leash. Is the tension of the leash in combination with the verbal cue mean the same thing to him when we were living in Brooklyn?     

Example 3: Grooming. Throughout Norman’s life, grooming has always been a challenge. He is very suspicious and afraid of being handled with an instrument (brush, comb, eye drops, wipes, etc) I’m not going to cover HOW and WHY this is, because I am not so sure myself. Something negative happened when he was a puppy that I am not aware of. All I can do is speculate. When I groomed Norman in the past and for the greater part of his life, he would lunge and try to bite the tool being used, like a brush. In the past, I would cue “leave it” – the behavior that I wanted was that Norman would not lunge and bite the brush. He never intentionally bit me, but had a few times as he was biting the brush. What I know now what I didn’t know then is that I should have stopped immediately. Clearly, he was scared and stressed, but we pressed on, and I was able to eventually eat chicken from one hand while I brushed with the other. Grooming became a very scary experience for Norman, overall

With the three examples I provided, each “leave it” cue have three different meanings through three different antecedent environments

1. to stay – relaxed on the deck

2. don’t put that in your mouth – on a walk in the country

3. don’t bite the brush – inside the house during a stressful experience.

Recently, I was planning the first training session for Leave it and Take it. I thought what could be the most boring object I can drop on the floor that Norman would have no interest in to re-shape leave it. At first, I was thinking I could use Rocky, Normans favorite stuffed toy. I thought that would cause too much arousal, and that presenting Rocky was in a cue itself that it was playtime. So, I grabbed a cloth napkin. Super boring right?

My criteria was to drop the napkin in front of Norman with no added cue. I will C/T when he ignores the napkin. We had a few really successful reps based on my criteria for that session. We took a break. The next session, my criteria was to add the cue leave it right before I released the napkin. As we did a few reps I could notice Norman backing away when I gave the cue. He would reset himself with the reinforcement he received near my feet. On the next rep I presented the novel object, which was the napkin, and cued leave it. Norman’s behavior escalated. He jumped back, and started vocalizing. The vocalizing was saying to me – I do not like that. It was the same vocalization and behavior presented when I would try to brush him.

Immediately I made the association. The napkin, although I saw it as totally harmless and uninteresting, Norman saw it as an unknown object and became suspicious of the napkin. And we were indoors. With the novel object followed by the verbal cue leave it sparked a negative association between the object, the environment in which the object was presented and with a cue that probably something negative was going to happen. I realized then that leave it is poisoned.

Norman and I ended the session right away. I assured him that he was okay and what he thought was going to happen is not going to happen by redirecting him with some well-known cues and a treat scatter.

I tried a different approach after a few minutes. I thought, maybe Rocky IS the way to work on leave it. And in this session, I didn’t use a marker or food reinforcers. I grabbed Rocky and Norman and I played. We used Rocky as a tug toy, I throw rocky like a football to the other side of the room, I chase Norman with Rocky in his mouth. We are having a blast.

So casually, I picked up Rocky, stood in front of Norman, and cued, leave it. I set Rocky on the ground. Norman meets his gaze with mine waiting for the next cue. After a few seconds, “Take it!” I say. Norman enthusiastically grabs Rocky. We do a few more reps. Each time I vary the time in between the leave it and take it. Norman is loose, wiggly and totally engaged. After a couple of sessions with Rocky, we moved on to other of his favorite items to generalize the cue and behavior.

What I thought was going to be a distraction from training, was actually incredibly reinforcing. Norman loves Rocky. Rocky is a cue that we are going to have fun and that Norman is safe. I remembered training should be fun!

(Take it was never a cue I used before this exercise. My cue was “Okay!” and I knew that I could have said any verbal cue, he would perform the behavior - to go take Rocky. I was transferring the cue right away to shape the opposites Take it and Leave it.)

My takeaway: In training, we learn about antecedent arrangements to help set the dog up for success. I thought about this only in terms of how the environment is arranged, which is correct, but as I saw Norman cringe from a poisoned cue, I never thought about any association to a negative experience IN that environment. Our home is quiet, clean, and comfortable and safe, except for those times grooming Norman, it may have felt otherwise. I realize that all dogs will have a history of negative experiences, just like humans. But to any poison, there is an antidote. In this case Rocky was the agent needed to neutralize the poisoned cue.