Clicker Training an Alpaca to Pick up Something

Hi Alicia,

Good work on introducing clicker training to your camelids!!! It will make changes in how they view you. You become a "person of interest" as I like to say and they will pay more attention and as you build that trust account with them with more and more positively reinforcing experiences they will want to spend time with you.

On your question..how do you get your alpaca to pick up an item and put it on cue.

First, behaviors are put on cue AFTER they are learned and are being performed to your criteria. PUtting a cue on too early is confusing to the animal and if you still have a lot of shaping to do with the behavior after the cue is put on, and you are a novice trainer it can get a bit tricky. Better at the stage of training where you are is to wait until the behavior is 90 to 100 percent the way you want it before putting it on cue. That will be more clear to you and the animal. And BTW whenever you are using targeting to teach a behavior (like the hat is a target you are asking for an action with..PICK UP) there is already a built in cue which is the target itself..so as you work with the object, the sight of the object becomes a cue. You can add your own special verbal or hand or body cue later and it will be paired with the object to give you more control.

SO how do you teach your animal to pick up the object. First I recommend that you teach your alpaca to target a few more items and not just concentrate on the hat. Get a few more behaviors under her "belt" so she learns the game more and will most likely offer more variations of the behavior. Also, because teaching a pickup for some animals requires really exquisite timing of your clicks, teaching a couple more behaviors will help you skills improve as well..So for instance, you can easily put a tennis ball on the end of a wooden dowel rod for a target stick (or there are many other things you can use) and teach her to touch that at any position and to follow it whereever you lead her with it. This is a handy thing to have as a behavior because you can lead them into position for nail trimming or going into a trailer or so on. (Nina Faust has a nice video on this on her website)

You could also teach her a head dip..I like head dips because they improve your skill of timing with clicking...you will see why when you try it! Stand quietly, wait for her to offer any movement of her head downward and click and reinforce. Shape the behavior gradually in small steps to lower and lower "dips" until it is where you want it (that is up to you, all the way to the ground, or up and down like saying yes or whatever you decide but make a decision and work towards it clearly0 and then add the cue (this may be accomplished in one session or in 5 depending on many conditions)..this is a little different behavior then targeting and is a body movement without a specific target which will allow her to learn that sometimes you want body movements. When you have a couple more behaviors like this, then go back to the hat situation because now you will have some alternate behaviors to work with to help her get momentum in a session.

Now back to picking up the hat...Experiment with some different objects you hold in your hand and see how she reacts to them and whether she is willing to mouth of bite at anything..even if the lip goes up and she is doing more then just a nose press. Stay away from the hat for now. Feel free to put the scent of a favorite food on it, like letting it sit in the grain bin or rubbing some watered down molasses on it (mine all love molasses and a small amount won't hurt anything..eventually you won't need it at all) or putting carrot juice (i have alpacas that like carrot juice) or anything like that on it. This might or might not work but it is one of many suggstions you can try.

If you find an object she wants to test with her mouth or more, you need to get your timing very accurate and click as she is testing the object. Repeat and repeat until she is consistently mouthing it (say 5 to 10 times in a row) and then DON"T click when she mouths it...and wait for a little "frustration" (Technically called an extinction burst) reaction where you will get bigger movements and click when makes more of an effort open her mouth more, or actually grab it. it is hard to describe each step because I don't know at what pace she will go...but to move behavior forward when you finish one small shaping step move along quickly to the next by NOT clicking for the step you just completed but as soon as possible clicking for the next step up towards the final behavior. A shaping plan is your plan of the small steps it will take to get her from a behavior she knows already (touching it with her nose) to picking it up..think of mechanically what she will need to do. A sample shaping plan for pickiing up an object might look loosely like:
Touch object with nose, open lips near or on object, slightly open mouth, grab at the object, lift the object slightly off the ground, lift the object higher, and then in steps higher until it is where you want it. BTW you need to have a goal for the pick up...where will it go after she picks it up!? I am guessing you want it to go somewhere, not just pick up and drop again? This will be steps farther along. How much time you spend on each step depends on your skills and the alpacas skills at each session. Once a step is pretty consistent 5 to 10 times in a row, then move to the next one. If behavior falls apart, go back to the last successful step.

I think it is better to have her learn to pick up something out of your hand or off a higher surface so you can get your eyes to the level of her mouth and actually see the small muscle movements of what she is doing. Use a table or as you were using hay bale ,but stack a couple up so it is higher.

Other tips..take the hat away each time and place it down again after each attempt...don't just lleave it in one spot..this helps to refocus.

If she is stalling with this behavior in a session, go quickly to targeting with a stick or targeting your hand, and then back to the pickup or do a couple of behaviors like the targeting and then maybe a dip or a recall and then back to the pickup...if she really likes the other behaviors this will build momentum as she is successful with those other behaviors and then quickly come back to picking up the hat or whatever object it is.

If you can find an object she likes to mouth or pick up naturally you can teach your cue PICK UP or whatever it is with THAT object and then start putting other objects in front of her and ask for the same cue and she will start to make the connection that the cue is the VERBAL you give and not just the sight of that object!

If you don't find an object she likes to mouth, then you will still do your shaping plan but I would still use a different hat than you have now (because she now probably has a history of only touching that hat and being reinforced for that and it may be hard to move on).

Some things I have found that my guys like to pick up:

The rubber balls that look like netting (they have large holes in them and they are easy to pick up. See Hol-ee Roller ball for dogs http://store.clickertraining.com/horoba.html The medium size or large works..the small is too small.

Baseball hats with the visor flipped up so they can grab it easily

Small towels or wash cloths that are wadded up so they have something sticking up to grab

I don't find that they like to pick up hard things very well, it is generally soft items, not that they can't learn but for a first behavior I would go with a soft item.

Other folks may have more suggestions on the list

Keep up the good work!

Susan Brown, DVM
The Behavior Connection
www.behaviorconnection.com