Cherry blossoms

Nothing seriously awful, of course — we’re healthy and fine. But this hasn’t been a great trip — more like a painful veering from one mishap to another. Someday I’m sure we’ll find the humor in it, but we’ll need a little time. Read on:

Mishap #1: Getting here, or Cam getting his head stuck in a fare gate.

The flight down on Saturday was fine — it took us less than an hour and  a half to fly from Manchester, NH to Baltimore, MD (great fares on Southwest). Why then, would it take us TWO and a HALF hours to travel the final 32 miles to downtown D.C.? Cherry blossoms. That’s why. The train station at BWI is filthy by the way, and of course Cam and Will insisted on putting their hands on every vending machine, water fountain, and pay phone in the place. I used up a week’s supply of antibacterial hand-gel before we even got out of the station.

Anyway, after some delays, we eventually made it to Union Station, only two Metro trains away from our hotel. We disembarked, hauled our luggage, stroller and children down the long platform, and eventually found our way to the Metro. Baffled tourists were everywhere, all trying to understand the Metro fare system, all asking each other for assistance, all cautiously approaching the fare machines and then backing away helplessly. The crowds were stunning, wall-to-wall people. Eventually I deciphered how much fare we’d need and purchased the tickets.

We approached the stroller gate next to the booth. In Boston, when you take the T with a stroller, they let you in through a plain old swinging gate so you don’t have to tangle with the automatic fare gates. I caught the attention of a Metro employee, so he could let us through. He insisted that we use the automatic, wheelchair-accessible fare gate. With Will beside me, Cam in a stroller, and loaded down with carry-ons (Bill was behind us hauling two large rolling duffels), I slid the fare card into the slot. The gates opened, Will ran through, and I started to push the stroller through just as the gates slammed shut.

This is similar to the gate that got Cam

Now on the T in Boston, the gates are like doors, so if they closed suddenly, they’d hit the sides of the stroller. In D.C., the gates are shaped like triangles, and when they violently slam shut, it turns out they are the exact size and shape to miss the stroller and strike the child in the head. Cam started screaming, and then Will, now trapped on the other side of the fare gate, cried to come back over. I extricated Cam from the gate but we had set off an alarm somehow, and only one of us had made it through, so there we were, stuck. The same Metro employee, completely annoyed and not at all apologetic, made a big show of re-setting the fare gate and letting us through. Cam was fine, but every time we approached a fare gate for the rest of the trip, he covered his ears with his hands and cried.

Mishap #2: Will shoved onto train by crazed cherry blossom mob

We needed to change Metro trains at the Gallery Place station. The station and all the trains were packed beyond belief. We found out later it was a perfect storm — three sports events in town the same night, plus the cherry blossoms at their peak, plus breakdowns in the system. We were getting shoved and pushed every which way.

Crazed Metro mob
(not my photo)

When the train arrived, everyone surged toward the doors. I was holding Cam, pushing the stroller, and carrying all the carry-ons. Will was holding onto the stroller, but the crowd — desperate to get around the stroller — literally shoved him right onto the train. I don’t remember the exact sequence of the next few seconds — it’s all a terrified blur — but I think I used the stroller as a battering ram to try to force my way closer to Will. As the doors closed and I realized I was losing him, I let go of the stroller, shot my arm through the doors, and grabbed the back of Will’s shirt. I tried to use my body to keep the doors from closing, without letting Cam get caught in between (the poor kid already had his head caught in a fare gate — he didn’t need to get trapped in a train door too). The top half of my body ended up in the train, desperately clutching at Will, and the other half, holding Cam, was outside the train. People inside the train, realizing what was happening, were trying to pry the doors open for me. Metro doors don’t bounce back, apparently. After a few agonizing seconds, I somehow squeezed onto the train with Cam, and the doors slammed shut, leaving Bill on the platform. I hugged Will, almost crying with relief. The thought of a 5-year old alone on that packed train in a strange city!

Someone must have taken pity on Bill, standing on the platform with two pieces of luggage, because the doors opened and he was able to squeeze in with us. We made it to the hotel without further incident.

Mishap #3: Accidentally eating at an expensive French restaurant

The next day we battled the crowds along the National Mall, at the Natural History Museum, and at the zoo. The distances in D.C. are vast, much farther than we remembered. We were all exhausted by the end of the day, and footsore. Leaving the zoo, we trudged toward the Metro station. I spotted a giant sign that said “Pizza” with appealing little tables set out on the sidewalk. It was actually warm enough to eat outside, too. What luck! I snagged a great table for us, and we all sat down. The waitress brought menus, rolls, and water glasses. Then she said, “Just want to make sure you know this is a French restaurant. Sometimes people see that pizza sign and think that’s for THIS place.” She laughed, like those people were idiots.

“Oh, um, of course, ” I said, frantically flipping through the menu. We should have apologized, gotten up, and left, but the kids were already tearing into the rolls, and we were so tired, and hungry.

See the pizza sign?!

“Let’s just stay, ” I told Bill. “It’ll be an adventure, something different.” He looked dubious. But we stayed. I ordered an appetizer as my entree, to try to keep the cost down. They didn’t have a kids menu, but offered to make the boys a plate of pasta. They unfortunately topped it with a very chunky sauce, which the kids found suspicious and refused to eat. My appetizer was good, and so was Bill’s dish, but both were so artfully and delicately presented that there wasn’t much actual food. Bill said, “I’d offer you a bite of the potatoes, but then I wouldn’t have any.”

“C”mon, we’ll laugh about this someday,” I said. Bill was glaring at me over the very expensive check. I had to admit, it was an awful lot to spend to still feel extremely hungry. After we paid the check, we went straight across the street to McDonald’s and ate again. I kid you not.

Mishap #4: Hotel evacuation

When we got back to the hotel after the French restaurant debacle, we stepped off the elevator and were immediately ushered outside by firemen — apparently the hotel was in the midst of an evacuation. It was already past the kids’ bedtime, and we were exhausted, but we reluctantly joined the group of guests wandering around on the front lawn of the hotel. I positioned the stroller at the forward edge of the crowd and instructed Will to RUN toward the elevator the minute they gave the all-clear. We made it into the second group onto the elevators when they let us back in, not too bad.

An hour later, around 9:30, literally moments after the boys had finally fallen asleep, a piercing alarm went off inside our room, accompanied by a bright flashing light. Both kids woke up and started sobbing.  Then a voice came over an intercom instructing us to leave the room immediately, and to proceed down the TWELVE flights of stairs. Bill and I looked at each other in disbelief. What else could go wrong?

In the end, we didn’t evacuate again. We looked out the windows to see what everyone else was doing — huddling in their rooms like us, apparently, waiting to see if it was the real deal. The alarm continued to go off every two minutes, and the kids continued to sob and cover their ears, but an actual human voice broke in to the recording at one point and said, “This is a false alarm, you don’t need to evacuate.” So we stayed, but for some reason the hotel couldn’t turn off the recorded alarm. It went on so long that Cam eventually fell asleep with his hands over his ears, his cheeks streaked with tears. We held Will and waited it out. Finally after 10 PM it stopped. Whew.

Mishap #5: Air & Space Museum

After a grueling couple of days, lots of tantrums from the kids, and the incessant crowds, we were looking forward to Monday’s visit to Air & Space. Will is into space and the planets and that kind of thing, and I just knew this would be a great outing for us. The cherry blossoms were past their peak, and it was no longer the weekend, so we figured the crowds would have decamped. They did — they left the cherry blossoms to visit the Air & Space Museum.

Bill and I aren’t all that crowd-tolerant to begin with, but I don’t know how anyone could have stayed inside the museum in those conditions. It was a madhouse, pushing, shoving, lost children sobbing (not mine, fortunately), a total melee. Both my boys reacted to the noise and chaos by immediately throwing tantrums — Cam literally, and Will in the form of whining and complaining. He informed us that he hates space, hates airplanes, was completely bored, and wanted to go home immediately. I tried to salvage the situation by having us split up — one of us would take Will around to try to see some exhibits, and one of us would stay with cranky Cam — but that failed too. There were impossibly massive crowds and long lines in front of every placque, every exhibit, every square inch of the place. I finally gave up. We trudged back to the hotel, defeated.

Epilogue

Today is Tuesday, April 7. Bill and the kids are back home safe now, and I’m ensconsed in the conference hotel north of the city, marveling at the profound silence in my hotel room. I miss the kids already, although not the tantrums. Looking back over the last three days, I have to wonder if it was worth it to take the trip. We spent a fortune (including the astonishing bill at the French restaurant, and $25 for an umbrella purchased from a gift shop during a downpour, because I neglected to pack one). That rubs salt in the wound of all the mishaps — not only did we have a rough time, we paid too much for it too. But we DID see the cherry blossoms at their peak — I guess that’s something. And there were some bright moments, like watching the kids happily splash their hands in the fountain at the World War II memorial. (Until Cam accidentally splashed Will, and Will in return delivered a tsunami of water into Cam’s face, resulting in major tears and we had to leave.)

One good thing — we conquered the Metro and became quite adept at it. And Will, who has long had an inexplicable, longstanding fear of escalators, actually got over it during this trip. I took him for a celebratory escalator ride at the Metro station before they left, just for fun. That beats the cherry blossoms any day.

The Good Nite Lite (see the web site) solves the problem that every parent has at some point during their child’s toddlerhood: The child wakes up in the pre-dawn hours with no idea what time it is, and thinks it’s time to get up. If the toddler is recently out of the crib and into a big-boy bed like our 2-year old, he’ll shuffle into mom and dad’s room, ready for breakfast. At 5 AM.

It’s not their fault. As adults, we’ve all woken up with no idea what time it is, but we have the ability to glance at the clock. Then we either fall gratefully back to sleep, or jump up in alarm and start the shower! But toddlers can’t read clocks. And once the little one is out of bed and wide awake … the parent has to either haul an unwilling child back to bed, or get up and face the day, or let them climb into the parent’s bed (which in our house just means we’ll be poked, prodded, pulled and jumped on — there’s no snuggling with my two wild boys at that hour). If ONLY small children had some way to know that it wasn’t morning-time yet …

The old-fashioned (and admittedly inexpensive) solution is a nightlight and a cheap timer. When the light comes on, the kid can get up. We did a version of this with our older son, and tried it with our younger one. But it just never worked well. For one thing, my kids keep fooling with the timer and messing it up — what a surprise for mommy, the nightlight came on at 4 AM! Time to rise and shine! Plus, nightlights in our house mean “sleeping time” so understanding that one special nightlight comes on at morning time instead is just harder for a two-year old to grasp.

Enter the Good Nite Lite. At $34.99 it’s not inexpensive, but it’s clever and cute. It comes pre-set from the factory to turn on its “moon” face at 7 PM and its “sun” face at 7 AM (but you can adjust the times). At 7 PM or the appointed evening time, the nightlight comes on, and looks like a blue moon. It’s bright for an hour and then dims for overnight. At 7 AM or the appointed morning time, it changes to a bright yellow sun (but not bright enough to wake your child). It stays lit for two hours and then goes off by itself. So, you set it and forget it.

My two-year old figured it out right away. I explained the moon meant bedtime, and that when he saw a sun he could come out of his room. The next morning he woke up after 7 on his own and came down the hall yelling, “Sun! Sun!” The next day he got up and crept into our room a little too early. “Oh,” I said sadly, guiding him back down the hall. “Look, it’s still a moon. Time to go back to bed.” And he went without a protest, because after all … it was the moon’s fault, not mine. Each day since, he’s either slept past 7 or waited in his room for the “sun” to appear.

My older son can read the “7″ on his clock, so now we have two children, both sleeping (or at least staying in their rooms staring hopefully at their clock and nightlight) until 7 AM, consistently. This is a wonderful thing. I know there are parents who figure it’s their job to be up at dawn if their kid wants to be — and I even know one mom who makes her toddler French toast every day at 5:30 AM — but 7 AM works great for us. (Isn’t it a a great quirk of parenting that 7 AM is considered “sleeping in”?!)

Thank you, Good Nite Lite!

1. I started at the top.

I got my start building and managing some of the highest-traffic web sites in the world during the dot-com boom years. When I helped build PC Week Online back in 1996, putting news on the web was still new. CNN, the Wall Street Journal, everybody — we were all experimenting, all trying to figure it out. How often should news updates be posted? Should there be an archive? How should it all work? Of course, then the bust came and we all got laid off, but those were great years, to be there right at the beginning. That was before most web designers working today were even building one-page sites for their families and friends. The point is, my experience is long.

2. I’m all about empowerment. Yours.

I can’t tell you how many small business clients I’ve worked with who have no idea where their domain is registered, how long before it expires, and who the contact is. I sometimes get panicked calls when a site goes offline because the domain expired and no one knew it was coming, followed by a wild goose chase tracking down the logins and passwords they need to get back up and running. It’s even more common to find clients with no ability to update their own website. This leaves them utterly dependent on whoever designed their site years earlier for even the tiniest of updates.

Part and parcel of my work with clients is to make sure the contact info on their domain registration is up to date and they know how to access it, and that they at least have a written “cheat sheet” with all the necessary URLs and logins for their domain, hosting and FTP setups. That’s the minimum every content owner should have. Beyond that, I work with each client on their maintenance plan for the site once it’s designed or re-designed. If a client would like to make their own updates, I build that into the process. Many organizations would love to make minor text updates without having to go back to the developer for help, and are willing to dedicate a resource (either an involved business owner or an admin) to do it.

The barrier to that in the past, of course, has been a lack of technology to allow a completely non-technical person to easily update a site, without having to learn HTML or new software. This is my personal Holy Grail — I’ve spent the last decade trying out new content management systems, looking for the one that will let content owners edit a web site the same way they’d edit a Word doc. I don’t think the technology is completely there yet, but it’s made huge gains in the last several years. These days, there’s no reason you can’t make most updates to your own site, when you want, without paying a developer to do it for you.

3. I’m affordable.

All the information on my web site speaks to my long experience with big corporate sites, so it might seem to a potential small business client that my services are out of reach financially. But I’m very transparent in this area — there’s no secret: I charge a fixed hourly rate of $80, and I work fast. It helps that I have as much project management in my background as I do web development. I’ve been refining and improving my design process for a decade or more, so I’m very efficient at what I do.

I provide a written estimate prior to the start of work, and keep detailed records of work performed in 15-minute increments. Terms typically specify a deposit of 50% of the estimated project cost around the time work begins, with the balance due within 30 days of site launch.

Learn more: Portfolio | What to Expect

For questions, comments or to schedule a consultation, please contact me at laurie@lauriebryce.com.

Maddie (left) and Kodi (right) with Will when he was a baby, 2004

Kodi is semi-famous in canine orthopedic circles for his two TPLOs (a very invasive and expensive cruciate repair surgery), which I chronicled on a web site back in 2000 (kind of a pre-blog blog). We lost him to histio (an aggressive cancer that strikes all too many Bernese) but he remains the gold standard of Berners in our hearts and minds.

Kodi in the snow

Kodi with Will

Maddie was different than Kodi — sweeter, goofier, and not afraid of air vents. Happy pretty much all the time. Didn’t hold a grudge if we took a trip without her, unlike Kodi who would literally refuse to look at us for days afterward. Maddie had the most beautiful, soft puppy-like fur her whole life. She loved swamps, ponds and dirt most of all. The muddier the better. She was happiest when swimming along near a trail I was walking — she’d swim alongside for as long as possible, and when the trail left the shore of the lake or pond, she’d finally come storming out of the water (failing to shake the water off, for some reason — the only dog in the history of the world who DIDN’T shake water off but wore it proudly).

She might not look happy, but Maddie was thrilled to be so dirty!

Maddie Girl

We lost Maddie to cancer just after she turned nine in 2006, when Cam was four months old. (We lost Kodi when Will was six months old — it’s hard not to feel guilty about that. Knowing how pampered dogs can get relegated to “just a pet” status when babies come along … we hope we didn’t do that, and we know logically that’s not why they died — Bernese are a very short-lived breed, sadly — but still.)

Both our beautiful Berners live on in our memories, and we talk about them all the time. They were quite a pair.

Maddie and Kodi in Vermont

Maddie with me and Will at her favorite spot in Ward Reservation, Andover

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Here are 10 reasons NOT to buy a dog from a pet store:

1. Health.

When you buy a puppy from a pet shop, you’re spending a lot of money for a dog whose parents you know nothing about. Have both parents had their hips and elbows x-rayed for dysplasia? Have the parents been tested for PRA, which causes blindness? Tests are expensive, but responsible breeders do them because their goal is to produce healthy pups. What’s the pet shop’s goal? If they say “healthy pups,” ask them for proof.

2. That guarantee isn’t worth what you think it is.

Pet shops make a big deal about their “lifetime guarantees.” But ask them what happens when you need $1,200 to correct crippling hip dysplasia in your six-month-old chocolate Lab puppy, or $2,500 to do a cruciate repair. The guarantee requires you to give the puppy back so they can put it to sleep, which is cheaper for them. Then they give you another puppy, one that’s no healthier than the first. A guarantee like that is worse than no guarantee at all.

3. The AKC myth.

Pet shops want you to think “AKC papers” equals healthy puppies. It doesn’t. The only thing AKC registration means is that both parents are purebred and AKC registered. The mother (dam) can be a truly awful example of the breed — or worse, suffering from crippling disease or illness — and the puppies can still be registered. Don’t believe it? The AKC says it right on their web site:

“There is a widely held belief that ‘AKC’ or ‘AKC papers’ and quality are one and the same. This is not the case. AKC is a registry body. A registration certificate identifies the dog as the offspring of a known sire and dam, born on a known date. It in no way indicates the quality or state of health of the dog.

Many people breed their dogs with no concern for the qualitative demands of the breed standard. When this occurs repeatedly over several generations, the animals, while still pure-bred, can be of extremely low quality.”

A responsible breeder will of course register her puppies if the breed is one of the 150 or so recognized by the AKC, but that’s only the beginning.

4. Good luck with housebreaking.

The puppies you see in the pet-shop window have spent their lives in cages. They’ve never seen grass, or dirt, and they’ve certainly never seen carpeting. Worst of all, they’ve been forced to eliminate in the same place where they sleep and eat. Once a puppy overcomes that early natural inhibition against eliminating in its den, any surface — your carpet, your couch, your bed — looks like a good spot for going to the bathroom.

A responsible breeder keeps the puppies very clean, and makes sure they have separate elimination areas. By the time they’re ready to go home, well-bred puppies are often well on the way to being housebroken.

5. How about socialization?

Imagine buying a puppy that has never been inside a house before! The doorbell, the vacuum cleaner, the dishwasher — those things can be terrifying to a puppy who has never seen them. What about neighborhood kids, riding in the car, or just walking on a leash? A responsible breeder exposes her puppies to all kinds of new situations, and makes sure they are confident, happy puppies when they go off to their new homes.

Plus, when you go to a breeder you generally have more than one puppy from which to choose. A responsible breeder temperament-tests her puppies to find out which ones are outgoing or shy or dominant. Then she matches up owners to make sure that active puppies go to active homes, and that a shy puppy ends up in a home that’s just right for it. If you’re going to spend all that money, it makes sense to look at several examples of the breed and then pick a dog that’s right for you.

6. What will that puppy look like when it grows up?

When you buy a puppy from a responsible breeder, you can usually meet the mother and see pictures or video of the father (sire). You can discuss with the breeder the faults each parent possesses (maybe the mother has an over bite, or the father is a little taller than the standard). You can’t predict exactly what the puppy will turn out like, but you’ll know what to expect, and you’ll certainly know that your purebred puppy will resemble his breed. Why would anyone spend so much money on a pet shop puppy without even knowing what the parents look like?

7. Price.

For the money that pet shops want you to spend, you’d expect a lot more. Think about all the things responsible breeders do that pet stores don’t: They choose the parents based on health and temperament issues; they pay for expensive tests to make sure both sire and dam are free from disease or illness; they raise the puppies with an eye toward getting them housebroken and socialized; and they help make sure the right puppies go to the right homes. And after all that, a responsible breeder usually charges LESS than the pet shops! Save your money and get a better quality puppy at the same time.

8. What do you know about the breed?

Pet shops can tell you a little about the breeds they sell. And they can point you to a rack of generic breed books. That’s it. A responsible breeder will be a wealth of information about the breed you’re interested in. She’ll be able to tell you about unique breed characteristics, ways to get involved in activities your dog might be suited for, and most importantly, she knows what specific health issues to watch out for. If you like, she may continue to be a resource for you as the puppy grows up, and can answer questions about training, behavior, nutrition and more.

9. Do you want to support the puppy mills?

How do you know pet shop puppies come from puppy mills? Because no responsible breeder would ever sell their puppies to a pet store, for two reasons:

• Responsible breeders care about the puppies they produce, and want them to go to very carefully selected homes.
• Keeping track of litters is an essential part of responsible breeding. If two puppies from a certain litter die from liver failure at a young age, the breeder knows there’s a problem in the line and will not breed the parents again. What does that say about the breeders of pet shop pups?

10. What’s that pedigree worth?

Pet shops make a big deal out of their pedigrees, which is interesting because they just contain a bunch of names. Can the pet shop tell you how long the puppy’s grandparents lived, and what they died of? How many of the parents littermates are still alive? How long do dogs in this pedigree usually live? A responsible breeder can answer all of those questions. You get not just a pedigree, but all of the important information behind the pedigree.

Still not sure? Here are some questions you can ask the pet store. A responsible breeder will have ready answers on all of them — and in fact would be concerned if you DIDN’T ask these questions!

• Have both parents been tested for hip dysplasia? (It’s been found in every AKC breed except greyhounds, so don’t let them tell you it’s not a problem.)
• What specific health problems are in the pedigree of each puppy?
• What’s the personality of the mother and father like?
• A responsible breeder provides copies of all health tests — can the pet shop do that?

How do I find a responsible breeder?

Finding a responsible breeder is not difficult for most breeds, and the reward — a healthy, well-adjusted, well-bred puppy — is worth it. Here are some ways to get started:

• Call the AKC at (919) 233-9767 or visit their Web page of breeder referral contacts at http://www.akc.org/breederinfo/breeder_search.cfm.
• Google the breed you’re interested in. You’ll find a wealth of information.
• Go to shows, fun matches or any kind of dog event — there will be plenty of people there to offer suggestions and advice. Be extremely careful when evaluating breeders who run ads in the newspaper.
• Don’t rule out a mixed breed or shelter dog — they’re wonderful pets, and frankly, your odds of getting a healthy, happy dog are better at the shelter than at a pet shop.

How do I avoid “backyard breeders”?

Backyard breeders operate in much the same way pet shops do. Money is the bottom line. Watch out for any breeder who:

• Talks about money before anything else.
• Doesn’t ask you questions about yourself and why you want a puppy.
• Says the parents “don’t need tests.” All purebred breeds suffer from genetic diseases, including cancer.
• Can’t provide a good answer to the question: “Why did you decide to breed these two dogs”?
• Can’t provide copies of OFA results (hip and elbow), CERF exams (eyes) or other health tests along with the pedigree.
• Breeds dogs younger than two years of age (two is the minimum age for hip certification by OFA).
• Has puppies always available. Responsible breeders have smaller numbers of carefully-planned litters.

Remember, finding the right breeder is the MOST important decision you will make in your impending relationship with a new purebred dog. This is a decision that will be with you for the life of the dog. Do your research and you stand the best chance of sharing a fulfilling life with your new puppy.

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Enjoy!

• See the full version of this speech

In the next five to seven minutes, you will learn a little bit about training dolphins, a little bit about training dogs, and the difference between a Coke machine and a slot machine.

In the early 1960’s, a woman named Karen Pryor started working as a dolphin trainer at a marine animal park in Hawaii. Dolphin training as a field was not off to a great start. That’s because in the entire history of animal training, the underlying principle had always been to catch the animal in a mistake, and then correct, or punish, that behavior. In dogs, you use a leash and a choke collar. But how do you punish a dolphin?

Trainers had started to offer fish to dolphins, to bribe them into performing particular behaviors, but it was in a haphazard, ineffective way. Pryor did two things to make that training effective: She learned to “shape” a behavior by rewarding small steps toward that behavior, and she used a reward marker, or signal, to mark the precise moment she saw the behavior she wanted. Her work changed the way countless thousands of animals are trained.

What Pryor did was pioneer the use of positive reinforcement in animal training. Positive reinforcement is a principle of operant conditioning, and you might recall that operant conditioning goes all the way back to B.F. Skinner.

The fundamental principle behind operant conditioning is that dolphins - and dogs, and people — do what works. The laws of behavior are always in effect. By that I mean that if a behavior is rewarding to an animal, you will see more of it. You might have a dog that finds it rewarding to stand at the window and do insane barking at the neighbor’s cat. Or you might have a dog that jumps all over you when you come home from work. You might be one of those people who has to chase their dog all over the park to catch him when it’s time to go home. These dogs aren’t being disobedient - they’re doing what works. When your kids won’t pick up their laundry off the floor, the same principle applies. You can focus on trying to make your punishment so powerful and so negative that it outweighs the reward, or you can change the reward.

But that drive to punish is pretty strong in us, and unfortunately there are still punishment-based dog trainers out there today. Here’s something you might hear them say:

My dog works to please me. I don’t bribe him with treats.

There’s a very outspoken positive reinforcement trainer named Jean Donaldson who says that it makes her physically sick to see trainers who rely on punishment and physical force but insist their dog is working to please them. She says she’s still waiting to meet this mythical dog with a desire to please. Remember, dogs do what works.

As for the treats, there’s a big difference between a bribe and a reward. In dolphin training, you use a whistle to mark the behavior you want to see, and then the reward comes later. In dog training, the equivalent to the whistle is this. (At this point in the speech, I clicked a clicker.)

Click! That’s right, it’s a clicker. A click means a reward is coming. It’s a nice, clear way to communicate with your dog. You don’t have to use it — you can use a phrase like “that’s it” instead of a clicker - but the point is that the dog learns to work for the marker. Then, the reward can be anything you want. The food can be in another room. And it might not be food at all. It might be a tennis ball, or the chance to go for a walk, or a pat on the head.

So how would you use positive reinforcement with the dog who enjoys insane barking at the neighbor’s cat? You reward an alternate behavior - make something else more rewarding to him than the barking. Even a dog that is barking nonstop has to breathe - so there’s a split second in there where he’s being quiet. Click, and reward. Pretty soon you’ll see more and more of the behavior you’re rewarding - peace and quiet - and less and less of the behavior you want to see extinguished. You can shape for longer and longer periods of silence. Notice the behavior comes before the cue. When you keep saying “be quiet” over and over while the dog is barking, it’s meaningless to the dog as a command, or worse, to him it starts to mean “bark more”! So shape the behavior first, and then add your cue.

Dogs that are trained with positive reinforcement will do something that dogs trained with punishment will never do - they actually start to offer behaviors. What if I lift my paw in the air? What if I roll over? Imagine how easy it is to train a dog that is so eager to work.

Another key principle of positive reinforcement is called variable reinforcement. It means you don’t have to click every single time - you raise your criteria as you shape the behavior. And you offer different rewards. Here’s the Coke machine and the slot machine: If you put your money in a Coke machine, and nothing comes out, you might kick the machine, you might rattle the machine, but after a while you give up and go away. But if you put your money in a slot machine and nothing comes out, you might stay there for hours, putting in more money. Casinos make hundreds of millions of dollars from people who will feed those machines all day long, waiting to be reinforced for their behavior. A slot machine reinforces you on a variable basis, and variable reinforcement is very powerful.

As an example, let’s look at the dog who jumps up on you when you get home from work. If he jumps up on you 10 times, and 9 of those times you ignore that behavior, or you punish that behavior, but on the 10th time, you’re wearing your gym clothes, you’re happy to see your dog, so you pat him and ruffle his ears when he jumps up — you have just variably reinforced this behavior, and not in the direction you wanted. Now he will jump up 99 times.

A traditional, punishment-based trainer will be so busy kneeing that dog in the chest, squirting him with lemon juice, throwing a soda can full of pennies at him, that he won’t even realize the laws of behavior are working against him. What if instead of thinking up creative ways to inflict punishment, you focused on rewarding the behavior that you want to see? You can “cure” a dog that has been jumping on people for years, in two or three five-minute sessions with a clicker.

So what if you have a dog, or you’re thinking of getting a dog, and you’d like to learn how to do this positive reinforcement stuff? You can see me at the end of the meeting - I have extra clickers and copies of Karen Pryor’s 15 Rules for Getting Started with the Clicker. If you’d like to take a class, like puppy kindergarten, here’s what to look for. It’s not enough to hear the trainer say they use “positive” methods. A good way to get a sense of a trainer’s real philosophy is to ask if they use treats. Remember, treats are just one kind of reward. But they’re small, convenient, portable, and most dogs are highly motivated by them.

I’m going to conclude with one more thing punishment-based dog trainers like to say:

OK, positive reinforcement is great for puppies and for tricks, but not serious obedience.

I had a Bernese Mountain Dog named Kodi. This is not a breed known for being a star in obedience. But Kodi got an AKC Companion Dog title, or CD. Getting a CD requires getting a qualifying score under three different judges, at three different shows. Three times Kodi had to do behaviors like heeling on a leash, off a leash, heeling fast, heeling slow, sitting for one minute with me across the ring, doing a down for three minutes with me across the ring, standing for an exam by the judge, and doing an off-leash recall from 50 feet away. Kodi never wore a choke collar, and was never given a leash correction. In our last show he received an award for getting the highest score of any Bernese Mountain Dog anywhere at the show that day.

So remember, the laws of behavior are always in effect. I hope this has been as rewarding for you as it has been for me.

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• Back to the short version

“Click!” (full version)

In the next five to seven minutes, you will learn a little bit about training dolphins, a little bit about training dogs, and the difference between a Coke machine and a slot machine.

How to train a dog

Here’s the history of animal training in a nutshell: I tell my dog to sit and he refuses to do it. Therefore, he has been disobedient and I need to correct that behavior. That’s normally done with a tool called a choke collar and a leash. I give the leash a quick jerk and release. If done correctly, by someone that knows what they’re doing, this gets the dog’s attention and causes him maybe a bit of discomfort, but no lasting damage. If done incorrectly, by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, it can damage the dog’s trachea.

Either way, the point is that the dog made a mistake. In traditional training, your job is to wait for a mistake and then punish him.

If the dog isn’t making a sufficient number of mistakes, you do what’s called proofing - you entice the dog to make a mistake, for example, by dropping food on the floor. If the dog leans over to sniff the food, then you have an opportunity to punish. In traditional or force-based training, if the dog isn’t doing something wrong, you can’t punish him - therefore no training is taking place.

Now I’m going to jump over to dolphin training, and we’ll return to dog training in a moment.

In the early 1960’s, a woman named Karen Pryor started working as a dolphin trainer at a marine animal park in Hawaii. Dolphin training as a field was not off to a great start. That’s because in the entire history of animal training, the underlying principle had always been to catch the animal in a mistake, and then correct, or punish, that behavior. In dogs, you use a leash and a choke collar. But how do you punish a dolphin?

Trainers had started to offer fish to dolphins, to bribe them into performing particular behaviors, but it was in a haphazard, ineffective way. Pryor did two things to make that training effective: She learned to “shape” a behavior by rewarding small steps toward that behavior, and she used a reward marker, or signal, to mark the precise moment she saw the behavior she wanted. Her work changed the way countless thousands of animals are trained.

What Pryor did was pioneer the use of positive reinforcement in animal training. Positive reinforcement is a principle of operant conditioning, and you might recall that operant conditioning goes all the way back to B.F. Skinner.

The fundamental principle behind operant conditioning is that dolphins - and dogs, and people — do what works. The laws of behavior are always in effect. By that I mean that if a behavior is rewarding to an animal, you will see more of it. You might have a dog that finds it rewarding to stand at the window and do insane barking at the neighbor’s cat. Or you might have a dog that jumps all over you when you come home from work. You might be one of those people who has to chase their dog all over the park to catch him when it’s time to go home. These dogs aren’t being disobedient - they’re doing what works. When your kids won’t pick up their laundry off the floor, the same principle applies. You can focus on trying to make your punishment so powerful and so negative that it outweighs the reward, or you can change the reward.

As she worked with the dolphins, and later with dogs and other animals, Pryor continued to build her theories and expand her methods. For example, one of the early problems she ran into was that it’s hard to throw a fish at a dolphin at just the right moment. It’s a problem in traditional, punishment-based dog training too - it’s hard to time the punishment exactly at the time the dog is making the mistake.

Pryor discovered that she could help dolphins make the connection between the behavior and the reward by using a marker to mark the exact moment the dolphin did what she wanted. She used a whistle, and discovered that she could be extremely precise. She could reward jumps out of the water that were higher than four feet, but not reward ones that were lower than that. She could reward swimming fast, or for a different trick, she could reward swimming slowly.

In dog training, the equivalent to the whistle is this. (Here I would click a clicker.)

Click! That’s right, it’s a clicker. All it does it mark the behavior that you want to see. It means a reward is coming. It allows you to be very precise, and it’s a nice, clear way to communicate with your dog, but you don’t have to use it. You can use a word or a phrase like “that’s it” instead of a clicker.

Either way, the dog learns to work for the marker. At that point, the reward can be anything you want. The dog is working for the click. The food can be in another room. And it might not be food at all. It might be a tennis ball, or the chance to go for a walk, or a pat on the head. Praise works too, although it’s a weak motivator for most dogs.

Both the whistle and the clicker are tools for learning. Once the animal has learned the behavior, you don’t need the tools anymore for that particular behavior. But for the learning stage, they are extremely helpful.

When Pryor was trying to get a dolphin to swim fast, or to jump higher than four feet, she was “shaping the behavior.” That’s a key part of positive reinforcement training. You don’t expect an animal to do an entire behavior perfectly the first time. You might reward the dolphin for putting his nose out of the water first, and then when he’s consistent about doing that, you raise your criteria a little bit and only reward if half of his body comes out of the water.

In dog training, you might reward any sit at all that your dog does, and then gradually, start to raise the criteria and reward only sits that take place on your left side. If you want your dog to walk on a loose leash instead of dragging you down the block, you might reward a split-second of loose leash, even if he did it by accident, and then gradually raise your criteria so that you need to see five full seconds of a loose leash before you click.

With the dog who enjoys insane barking at the neigbor’s cat, you want to reward an alternate behavior - something else that’s more rewarding to him than the barking. Even a dog that is barking nonstop has to breathe - there’s a split second in there where he’s being quiet. Click, and reward. Pretty soon he’s interested in what you’re doing, and you’ll see more and more of the behavior you’re rewarding - peace and quiet - than the behavior you want to see extinguished. Later, you can add a cue, like “shhh!” But notice the behavior is learned first. When you keep saying “be quiet” over and over while the dog is barking, it’s meaningless to the dog as a command, or worse, to him it starts to mean “bark more”! So get the behavior first, reward it, and then add your cue.

Positive reinforcement training is something anyone can do. Kids are good at it, once they understand how to click behaviors they like, and then provide the reward.

Dogs that are trained with positive reinforcement will do something that dogs trained with punishment will never do - they actually start to offer behaviors. What if I lift my paw in the air? What if I roll over? Imagine how easy it is to train a dog that is so eager to work.

Let’s talk about the Coke machine and slot machine. It sounds like the setup for a joke, but it actually illustrates a fundamental principle of positive reinforcement training.

If you put your money in a Coke machine, and nothing comes out, you might kick the machine, you might rattle the machine, but after a while you give up and go away. But if you put your money in a slot machine and nothing comes out, you might stay there for hours, putting in more money. Casinos make hundreds of millions of dollars from people who will feed those machines all day long, waiting to be reinforced for their behavior. A slot machine reinforces you on a variable basis, and variable reinforcement is very powerful.

In the dog world, you want to be the slot machine. The dog never knows what he’s going to get next. Let’s say you call your dog in the park, and he ignores you. Remember, he’s doing what is rewarding to him. The laws of behavior are always in effect, whether or not you’re aware of them, and whether or not you’re taking advantage of those laws. He’s finding it more rewarding to play with his buddies than to come back to you. And he knows what the punishment is — he’s doing “doggie math” and deciding that the punishment is worth it.

Rather than trying to find a punishment painful enough to outweigh the reward of playing with his buddies, I’m going to make coming to me when I call him the most rewarding thing in the world - better than other dogs, even better than chasing squirrels.

To shape that behavior, I won’t start training at the park, because it’s a very distracting environment. I’ll start in my living room, and I might shape the behavior I want by rewarding any movement toward me at all. I keep raising my criteria, and trying different environments - the backyard, the dog park when there are no dogs there. And I will use variable reinforcement to my advantage - when he comes when called, he might get a piece of hot dog, he might get a piece of cooked chicken, he might get to go right back and play some more, or he might get what’s called a “jackpot” - a whole big handful of little treats. Now I’ve completely ruined his doggie math - he doesn’t know what the reward will be, so he’s going to come over and check it out. Remember, variable reinforcement is very powerful.

It works in reverse, too: Let’s look at the dog who jumps up on you when you get home from work. If he jumps up on you 10 times, and 9 of those times you ignore that behavior, or you punish that behavior, but on the 10th time, you’re wearing your gym clothes, you’re happy to see your dog, so you pat him and ruffle his ears when he jumps up. You have just variably reinforced this behavior. Now he will jump up 99 times.

A traditional, punishment-based trainer will be so busy kneeing that dog in the chest, squirting him with lemon juice, throwing a soda can full of pennies at him, that he won’t even realize the laws of behavior are working against him. What if instead of thinking up creative ways to inflict punishment, I focused on rewarding behavior that I want to see?

When the dog jumps up, if his feet hit the floor for a split second, I’m going to click. That’s going to startle the dog. He probably doesn’t even know what it was that he did. But he might stop jumping enough to get his reward. Then he’s probably going to jump up again. I wait until I see four feet on the floor and I click again. Now he’s really wondering what’s up. He’s doing his doggie math - what happens when I jump up? Nothing. What happens when all four feet are on the floor? Incredible stuff - I get a click, I get a reward, I get patted .. this is where it’s at. You can “cure” a dog that has been jumping on people for years, in two or three five-minute sessions with a clicker.

So what if you have a dog, or you’re thinking of getting a dog, and you’d like to learn how to do this positive reinforcement stuff, see me at the end of the meeting - I have some extra clickers and copies of Karen Pryor’s 15 Rules for Getting Started with the Clicker.

If you’d like to take a class, like puppy kindergarten, here’s what to look for. It’s not enough to hear the trainer say they use “positive” methods. Unfortunately there are punishment-based trainers who will put a choke collar on 10-week old puppies, jerk them literally off the ground to correct them for not knowing how to heel, and then pat them on the head when they’re done and call it positive training. A good shortcut to get a sense of what kind of methods the trainer really uses is to ask about treats. Remember, a treat is just one kind of reward. But it’s small, convenient, portable, easy to get, and most dogs are highly motivated by it, so most positive reinforcement classes will use them.

I’m going to conclude by sharing two things punishment-based trainers will say:

1. “My dog works to please me. I don’t bribe him with treats.”

There’s a very outspoken positive reinforcement trainer named Jean Donaldson who says that it makes her physically sick to see trainers who rely on punishment and physical force but insist their dog is working to please them. She says she’s still waiting to meet this mythical dog with a desire to please. Remember, dogs do what works.

As for the treats, there’s a big difference between a bribe and a reward. Remember that the clicker — the reward marker — separates the reward from the behavior.

And treats are just one form of reward. They’re the ones most commonly used, but your dog might be more motivated by a tennis ball, a tug toy, or a chance to roughhouse with you.

2. “OK, positive reinforcement is great for puppies and for tricks, but not serious obedience.”

I had a Bernese Mountain Dog named Kodi. This is not a breed known for being a star in obedience. But Kodi got an AKC Companion Dog title, or CD. Getting a CD requires getting a qualifying score under three different judges, at three different shows. Three times Kodi had to do behaviors like heeling on a leash, off a leash, heeling fast, heeling slow, sitting for one minute with me across the ring, doing a down for three minutes with me across the ring, standing for an exam by the judge, and doing an off-leash recall from 50 feet away. Kodi never wore a choke collar, and he was never given a leash correction. In our last show he received an award for getting the highest score of any Bernese Mountain Dog anywhere at the show that day.

So remember, the laws of behavior are always in effect. I hope this has been as rewarding for you as it has been for me.

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Clicker training is a new, science-based way to communicate with your pet. It’s easier to learn
than standard command-based training. You can clicker train any kind of dog, of any age. Puppies love it. Old dogs learn new tricks. You can clicker-train cats, birds, and other pets as well.

Don’t worry, at first, about getting rid of behavior you don’t like. Instead, start with some good things you want the dog to learn to do. Keep notes (the refrigerator door is a good place.) Jot down what the dog was doing when you started. Once a day or so, jot down what you have achieved with each behavior. You will be surprised at the progress! Reward YOURSELF for the dog’s improvements.
Here are some simple tips to get you started.

1. Push and release the springy end of the clicker, making a two-toned click. Then treat. Keep
the treats small. Use a delicious treat at first: little cubes of roast chicken, say–not a lump of kibble.

2. Click DURING the desired behavior, not after it is completed. The timing of the click is crucial. Don’t be dismayed if your pet stops the behavior when it hears the click. The click ends the behavior. Give the treat after that; the timing of the treat is not important.

3. Click when the dog does something you like. Choose something easy at first, that the dog is likely to do on its own. (Ideas: sit; come toward you; touch your hand with its nose; raise a paw; go through a door; walk next to you.)

4. Click once (in-out.)
If you want to express special enthusiasm, increase the number of treats, not the number of clicks.

5. Keep practice sessions short. Much more is learned in three sessions of five minutes each than in an hour of boring repetition. You can get noticeable results, and teach your dog many new things, by fitting a few clicks a day here and there in your normal routine.

6. Fix bad behavior by clicking good behavior. Click the puppy for relieving itself in the proper spot. Click for paws on the ground, not on the visitors. Instead of scolding for barking, click for silence. Cure leash pulling by clicking and treating those moments when the leash happens to go slack.

7. Click for voluntary (or accidental) movements toward your goal. You may coax or lure the dog
into a movement or position, but don’t push, pull, or hold it. Work without a leash. If you need a leash for safety’s sake, loop the leash over your arm or through your belt; don’t use it as a tool.

8. Don’t wait for the “whole picture” or the perfect behavior. Click and treat for small movements in the right direction. You want the dog to sit, and it starts to crouch in back: click. You want it to come when called, and it takes a few steps your way: click.

9. Keep raising your goal. As soon as you have a good response—when the dog is voluntarily lying
down, coming toward you, or sitting repeatedly—start asking for more. Wait a few beats, until the dog stays down a little longer, comes a little further, sits a little faster. Then click. This is called “shaping” a behavior.

10. When the dog has learned to do something for clicks, it will begin showing you the behavior
spontaneously, trying to get you to click. Now is the time to begin offering a cue, such as a word or a hand signal. Start clicking for that behavior if it happens during or after the cue. Start ignoring that behavior when the cue wasn’t given.

11. Don’t order the dog around; clicker training is not command-based. If your dog does not
respond to a cue, it is not “disobeying;” it just hasn’t learned the cue completely. Find more ways to cue it and click it for the desired behavior, in easier circumstances.

12. Carry a clicker and “catch” cute behaviors like cocking the head, chasing the tail, or holding up one paw. You can click for many different behaviors, whenever you happen to notice them, without confusing your dog. If you have more than one dog, separate them for training, and let them take turns.

13. If you get mad, put the clicker away. Don’t mix scoldings, leash-jerking, and correction
training with clicker training; you will lose the dog’s confidence in the clicker and perhaps in you.

14. If you are not making progress with a particular behavior, you are probably clicking too
late. Accurate timing is important. Get someone else to watch you, and perhaps to click for you, a few times.

15. Above all, have fun. Clicker-training is a wonderful way to enrich your relationship with
your dog.

Karen Pryor

(copyright 1996 by Karen Pryor)

Initial Consultation
The initial consultation is about information gathering (I’ll come to you if geography permits — I live north of Boston, Mass; otherwise we can chat by phone). We talk about your current site, if there is one — what you like about it, what you don’t like about it — and what kinds of things have changed in your business since the last redesign. I get a sense of the direction you’d like to go, and ask my follow-up questions based on that.

Here are some things I help you think through in that first meeting or in subsequent conversations. Don’t worry if you don’t know the answers! I’m here to help.

• How up-to-date is the information on your current site?
• What has changed with your small business or your goals since the site was designed?
• What do you like about your current site?
• What frustrates you about it?
• What are your competitors doing that you wish your site could do too?
• Can your clients or potential clients find the information they need on your site?
• Do you find yourself answering the same questions from clients time and again, questions that aren’t answered on your site but could be?
• Does your site showcase your products, services or prior projects adequately?
• Does everyone at your organization use domain e-mail (like john@mycompany.com), and know how to log into their domain e-mail rather than answering mail from john@yahoo.com?
• Do you have a group e-mail address like allstaff@mycompany.com that you use internally to reach everyone at once?
• Do your clients have a general address to reach you (info@mycompany.com) and does that address have an auto-responder to let clients know you got their message and will get back to them?
• Do you have a user-friendly contact form that makes it easy for potential clients to get in touch, and that makes it easy to route incoming e-mail to the right person within your organization?
• Do you know where your domain is registered, who the contact is, and when it expires?
• Do you know the logins for your web host’s control panel and FTP settings?
• Do you have documentation on how to update your site, if something happens to your web developer?
• How frequently does the content on your site change?
• Is the content on your site written specifically for the web? (Web users scan more than they read!)
• Is your navigation schema and structure intuitive to your visitors?
• Are there resources within your organization to make site changes, or would you rather the developer handle all updates?
• Would you like to have secure, private access for existing clients to log in and see invoices or photos of work in progress?
• Are you interested in site marketing and SEO (search engine optimization)?

Design Considerations
We also talk about sites you’ve seen that you liked, and what you liked about them. It’s a big leg up to know that you can’t stand boxy, modern looking sites for example. Or that you really love the color green and sites that have rounded corners. It’s OK if you don’t know what you like — after looking at a few examples, we’ll find a pattern in what appeals to you, and I’ll use that to build from there.

Navigation
After the initial consultation, which may take only one meeting or several, we focus on the navigation. This is sometimes left until later in the process in web design projects, but it’s a key component, and it’s important to nail it down sooner rather than later. The trouble many folks have is that a web site navigation forces you to clarify things that are often rather fuzzy in real life. I call it the “crucible” — deciding what things to list most prominently, and which to demote to sub-categories, forces you to crystallize what your true priorities are. It’s not always an easy process, but I’m there to guide you through it.

Design Directions
Armed with your goals, your likes and dislikes, and a provisional navigation, I then start thinking of design directions. (Large or complex sites may require a wireframe, sort of a skeleton site, first, but this isn’t always necessary.) I typically develop three quick design directions (actual designs, but done in rough draft form, without polish).

I can build a unique, from-scratch design, or customize your site based on free CSS templates that are widely available online. Here’s an example of the design directions I built for a recent project.

For a law firm in Boston, I created three design directions, below. They’re not complete sites, just a provisional homepages — enough to give you an idea of where they’re headed.

The client in this case very much liked Design Direction 1, so we went with it. Here’s what the finished product looks like:

Development
After you’re settled on a design and provisional navigation, I start to build. The pages are empty at first — we don’t move the content in until the design and navigation have been finalized. Looking at mockups and design directions is different than actually clicking through a site. It’s important for me to give clients the opportunity to click through — it just feels different to actually use a site vs. thinking about what it will look like. So that helps us settle any edits on the design and navigation.

Then I add content, either transferring it in from the existing site or using new content you provide. Unlike many web developers, I have an editorial background, so I can help write and edit content. But you are the ultimate expert on your own business and industry, so be prepared to do some homework at this stage.

When placing the content, I also polish the design, check it for cross-browser compatibility again, and add or finalize special features like Google maps and contact forms. I also add meta tags and perform some other Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tasks that I include at no charge in every project. Additional SEO tasks are optional — I’m happy to help you think through the value of SEO for your organization and decide how much you want to do in that area.

Launch
Now we’re ready for the final review and signoff. Then we launch, and your new site is live. Congratulations!

Maintenance
Post-launch, I provide you with written documentation that includes all logins, passwords, and instructions for special features — everything you need to know for the care and feeding of your web site. I provide training for those interested in updating their own web site content. If you don’t ever intend to update the site yourself, that’s fine — I’m always available for maintenance.

Learn more: Portfolio | What Sets Me Apart

If you’d like to talk about a new web site or a redesign of your current site, reach me at laurie@lauriebryce.com or 978-352-7161.