02 AprEpisode 137 | Why you should teach your dog to use your iPhone (seriously): SFTD’s Dog Training in 21 Days’ Day 2 Challenge, explained
Touchscreen devices can be used to teach a nose touch, which is a basic, building-block behavior that School For The Dogs' trainers teach almost every dog they work with. A nose touch can be taught with a person's hands and a dog's nose; the person clicks when the dog's nose touches the screen, and then the dog receives a reward. Using a touchscreen device and one of a handful of apps, you can take the clicker out of the equation and your dog's nose will register a sound when it makes contact with the screen, essentially doing the job of any good marker signal. Annie discusses the origins of her use of touchscreens with dogs and talks about some of the more advanced work that can be done with screens, such as teaching a dog to read, teaching cue differentiation, and more.
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Mentioned in this episode:
iPaw class at School for the Dogs
Teaching dogs “Touch” – Episode 60 | The Most Important Behavior You’ll Ever Train
More on using touch screens:
iDog: Teaching pets to use iPads in NYC
App For Dog: the first app made specifically for canines
Three apps your dog can use to make art
Apps mentioned:
App for Dog FREE – Puppy Painting, Button and Clicker Training Activity Games for Dogs
Transcript:
[Intro and music]
Annie:
A few years ago, back when Kate and I were running School for the Dogs out of my living room, in 2013 I got a spate of prank phone calls. They might've all been from the same person. I don't know. One was someone asking me if I could help them teach their dog to navigate the worldwide web, because right now he only knew how to do one thing online and it was to watch porn.
Another caller asked if I could teach the dog to use the remote control. That one I actually, I thought was legit for, for half a second. I said, I guess I could teach a dog to use a TV remote, but why would you need to do that? And he said, well, I'd like it if he could change the channel when I'm masturbating.
And one caller wanted to know if I could teach fellatio to a dog, and before hanging up on the person, I did give a two word answer, peanut butter.
Anyway, the reason that I was getting these silly phone calls was because School for the Dogs, which at that point was really just me and Kate, got a lot of press in the summer of 2013 for teaching dogs how to use iPads. You know, it's interesting, in the last couple of years there's been this talking pet movement of people using buttons to teach their dogs words and even sentences.
And I think around 2012 or so, I was looking for those kinds of buttons, which were kind of hard to find. And I bought a million different kinds of buttons on — this was before this was like a thing. I bought a million kinds of buttons on Amazon and was trying to teach my dog to push buttons for different reasons, for different things. But couldn't really find a button I like.
And then it dawned on me that that touchscreens were really just buttons, and certainly more available and easier to push than a lot of the ones I was getting on Amazon. So I started to teach my dog to push different buttons on the screen. I was using different apps. I found a lot of them for like handicapped people or kids.
And then I read a — and I didn't really think about it as like I'm teaching my dog to use an iPad. I just thought about it more as like teaching him to push a button, I guess. Anyway, then I read something in The Awl which was like an online magazine, that was a spoof of a girl trying to get into college and writing about all the crazy, impressive extracurricular stuff she does. And one of the things it said in this pastiche was that she was training her dog to use an iPad in her free time.
And it kind of clicked for me where I thought, Oh, this is like a sticky idea. This is something that would get people's attention. It's a joke here, but I actually could teach a dog to use an iPad. So I started to experiment with lots of different apps where a dog could actually learn to do different things on the screen.
I helped a friend of mine develop an app that's still available. It's called App for Dog. And you can teach a dog to push buttons on different sides of the screen. You can have your dog do a kind of drawing. And it did get the interest of the press, which I kind of hoped it would.
It was featured, we had an article about us on the cover of the Wall Street Journal. There were photos taken by the Associated press of me and my dog, Amos. A trainer in London brought me over, and I was in a bunch of English newspapers showing how you could teach a dog to draw and even read. Using an iPad. And today we do have a class at School for the Dogs called iPaw which is led by our trainer, Anna, where she helps people do this kind of thing on the iPad.
But in 2013, when we were getting all this publicity, it really, I kinda knew it would be seen by people as something silly, frivolous. I didn't care. I just thought, well, it'll get people talking about dogs and dog training in some kind of way.
But the thing is, it's actually something that I wish more people were doing in a more serious way, because I think if you, if you can teach a dog to use a touchscreen and there's a lot of neat stuff you can work on. You can teach a dog to differentiate between different numbers on the screen, different buttons on the screen, different colors. You could teach a dog to read from the screen, which is something we've done a bunch of.
And, the non-initiated, the first question is, well, why would you want your dog using an iPad? Your dog's not going to start doing online banking for you. But like so much of the training that I like to do, the doing of it is the point. You're teaching your dog to learn from you in a more efficient way. You're teaching your dog in a way that's fun for your dog and you know, can be fun for you.
And the fact is we all have these devices on us all the time. We're all obsessed with them. We're all looking at them all the time. So if we could figure out ways to help people share the interests they have in their smartphones with their dog, that could actually benefit the dog.
And I do think there are things that we could use we could teach dogs to do on touchscreens that could be useful ultimately. And there are probably people doing this. If you know someone I'd love to hear from, from them, but, you know, you could teach a dog to touch a button that is on a touchscreen to call 911 if their owner has fallen for example.
Or more simply, you know, if you have an old touch screen device, you could use that in lieu of a bell on the door and have you have your dog touch the touchscreen to make a noise when they want to go out. I mean, a million, a million fun, silly, creative things that could be done.
We have a lot of clients who have been able to dive into the silly and have their dogs do drawings with their noses on the iPads. I know Alex, our head of marketing, her husband Benny, his office is plastered with drawings by his dog Gilby. Anyway, I think touchscreens with dogs are an area that, that has largely been untapped, excuse the pun.
But the reason why I'm mentioning all this today is because we just started our Dog Training in 21 Days challenge which we're doing on Instagram, please head over there. We're spelling out what the challenges every day for the next three weeks. We're doing demos.
It's all based on the dog training in 21 days curriculum that I wrote a year or so ago, where I was sort of trying to figure out, okay, if somebody just got a dog and they had 21 days where they just maybe had a few minutes a day to focus on the dog, what would I what would I suggest? So I just kind of wrote it as if I was like writing to a friend. Here's something that you can do every day for 21 day.
And I'm excited about it, cause I'm going to be doing it with my dog, Poppy. I think it's sort of a nice scaffolding to work with. And today is day two, and today's task is to teach your dog to use a touch screen device. And this, again, I know this strikes people as just silly, ridiculous, whatever.
But there's a main reason why I like teaching this to new dog owners early on, especially to kids. Cause I think it's a really nice way to sort of get kids interested and excited about dog training. It's really as simple as teaching a hand touch to a dog, which is one of the first things we teach almost every single dog that we work with.
I'll link to the show notes, link in the show notes to podcasts all about teaching the hand touch. It's really like the core building block behavior. If I touch X to Y, good thing happens is sort of an equation that everything in dog training could be built on, kind of dog training we do. And in this case, the X is the nose, the Y is your outstretched fingers or hand.
And it's a very easy thing to teach that you can use to practice your timing. Cause you're going to click or use a marker word. The second the dog touches your hand, follow it with a reward. It's something you can set up to be super simple for your dog. Your hand’s going be right in front of your dog's nose.
And once you've established you know, Hey, when I see my humans handout outstretched this way — I usually use two fingers — I go touch that something good happens. You're building your dog’s come, you're building a tool that you can use to lure your dog into new positions. So many things that just start with a very simple hand touch. Are you teaching your dog how to interact with your hands in an okay way.
And teaching a dog to touch a touchscreen device is really no harder than putting said touch screen device in your hand. I think it's actually best to start with a phone or like an iPad mini, something you can kind of grab in one hand. And rather than touching your fingers they are going to touch this device. If you've done any kind of hand touch work, it's going to be extra easy because your dog's gonna go towards your hand probably anyway.
If you haven't done any kind of hand touch work, you can set this up to be stupidly easy. If they're not, if touching the screen isn't working, you can even just sort of hold it down. So they're touching the corner of it. You can have it like a quarter inch from your dog's nose. You could even put your whole device in a plastic bag and smear the screen with peanut butter to get their interest in it. Which you're not going to have to do forever, but just to begin with.
But the reason that I like teaching this sometimes even more than teaching a dog to just touch a hand is because it can really help people understand why it's so important to use a marker or some sort of bridging stimulus. In this case, I like using an app called Doodle Buddy. It has — which is free in the app store, whatever the app store or play store, or I don't know, it's free.
And when you open the app at the bottom, there is an icon with a smiley face that says objects and there you can basically pick out like a rubber stamp kind of. I'm going to pick just like a regular smiley face here. And now, as soon as my finger touches the screen, it's going to make this noise.
My ringer volume is off. [noise] I also like, there's like a mouth symbol. I kind of liked that. [smooch sound] I like that one. It's a little bit shorter to the point, but there are like, I don't know, a thousand different symbols here, each of which makes this kind of noise. I'm going to pick another one randomly. Here's a saxophone what happens with that one. [tweet sound] Oh, that's a good one. And when it makes this noise, it also leaves a little Mark on the screen. Here's another, this is an old fashioned telephone. [noise] Oh, that's another good noise.
When we're teaching a hand touch, we’re clicking or saying the word yes or using some other kind of marker to pinpoint the moment the dog's nose hits the hand, and then that's being followed by a treat that shouldn't appear until after your dog hears the marker. Or sees the marker if you're using a visual one.
And it's saying, Hey, that thing, that thing that happened right then when your nose touch my hand, that is the thing I am rewarding you for. Because it would have been hard to get an edible treat into your dog's mouth at the very second that your dog was engaging in that behavior. But if your dog is touching the nose to the screen and the screen itself is what is registering the touch and is letting you know with this little silly noise, then the dog is kind of doing the work for you.
You don't have to click, you don't have to say yes, you're just going to follow that up with a reward, which also doesn't have to be food. It could be play. We tend to use food, small pieces of very, very small pieces of food, because it's quick and easy. It does not have to be something edible.
And the owner of course, then kind of walks away with a drawing of these random icons. Or there is also like a paint feature in the app that is fun to use, although it doesn't make noise when you use it. But it's, you know, it's sort of like a little brag that someone can show off. But that's not really the whole point.
Another fun app where you can really do the same thing is called the yes-no. There are a bunch of different yes no apps, but there's one I like called Yes or No Communication that has a big red and a big green button on it. When you press the big red no button, it says no. When you press the yes one it says, yes.
So same idea here, where you can ask your dog a silly question and the moment their nose makes contact with the screen, it's either going to say yes or no, and they get then follow that with the reward.
And of course you could use this kind of button work, and this is something that we do in our iPaw class. You could use this kind of work to actually teach them the difference between red and green or even a spelled out word, like yes or no. Or I don't know about red and green though. I always forget what colors dogs can actually see, but let's say black or white or whatever. One and two. This is a fun beginning of teaching differentiation.
But the starting point is just teaching them to touch this thing with their nose at all. And like I said, the touch is just a fundamental behavior that you can eventually do billions of things with that have nothing to do with, you know, your dog's nose and an object or your hand.\
It's just teaching the dog when X touches Y, when butt hits the ground, when butt touches ground, that's a sit, when body touches ground, that's a lie down. When, mouth stops touching stick, that's a drop it. So once you've started to teach this behavior, there's just a lot of places you can go with it.
So go grab a touchscreen device, especially one that you might have laying around that's old, so that you don't mind getting some slobber on it. I have never had a screen break by the way. This is something that I’ve been asked [laughs]. I have also never had a device stop working because of slopper on it. It's funny, you know, Apple doesn't advertise that it won't break if your dog pangs her nose against it and that it can withstand a lot of slobber, but these are true facts of the iPhone.
I've also done this with iPads. I've done this with the Amazon, what's it called? The Fire thing. Like their very inexpensive touchscreen device. So find somethin. And I will put some apps in the show notes. But again, I was doing this a lot like seven years ago or so, and then I kind of took a break for it from it. So I haven't investigated a lot of the apps that are out there.
Doodle Buddy is the big one I use, App for Dog is fun to use the painting part of that, and it also has a screen that's just one big clicker. So you can teach the dog to touch that. And it has a screen that has two different buttons, which you can program to make two different sounds.
I used to use an app that I haven't found a good replacement for — if someone finds one, let me know — it used to be called big camera button and it would turn the entire screen of the touchscreen device into a button so that anywhere a dog touched it on the screen, it would register like a selfie, like a very up-close selfie. I think it had a timer on it too so you could have it shoot like right after your dog touches it with his nose. Anyway, I think they stopped making this app. Cause I last time I looked for it, I couldn't find it.
But you know what, you could also teach your dog to very specifically touch the capture button on your phone to take their own selfie. Or set the phone on a selfie facing burst as you have the dog touch the screen so that you can, or on a video even, so that you can watch your dog touching the screen. For that you are going to have to make up some kind of verbal marker, be it a yes or use the clicker.
Like I said, what's fun about Doodle Buddy if you use the little icon stamp function, is that it is that sound is going to register for you and take some of the work out of it.
Another sort of nice byproduct of this is if your dog becomes very interested in your phone, something, you know, up until now, your phone has probably been something that means when it is present, it means my person is not paying a lot of attention to me until they want to take my photo. And then they're waving this thing around like mad, this meaningless thing.
Well, you know what, one benefit of this kind of training is it's going to get your dog interested in your phone. So that next time you are holding up a phone to take a photo, your dog is going to look at that phone as something that is meaningful and fun, kind of like a ball. You know, some people will hold up a ball or a squeaky toy above their phone to get the dog to look at the phone. Well, what if you could build that kind of interest in the phone itself so that your dog looks at it.
When you think about it, humans have had their dogs interact with their tools for, I don't know, probably millennia. You know, in recent years, think about how we have used technology and dogs in tandem in so many ways, whether that is teaching dogs to pull sleds or gosh, you know putting Laika into orbit, Laika the dog, one of the first mammals, I believe to go into space. Or teaching dogs to sniff out bombs or IEDs.
I think there is more and more going on using cutting edge technology to help dogs help us. And we all have this rather cutting edge technology in our pockets these days. And why not? Why not incorporate them, these devices, into our lives with our dogs.
One last little fun thing I'll mention that you can do, if you do get going with this. And this is something that we do in our iPaw class which we've been offering virtually for the last year. I think we offered it in the studio though before that, it’s a lot of fun. But one thing I like to do is teach a dog hidden cues so that the dog knows, If I say what's the answer, for example, they can learn that that's a cue for touch the button on the right that says yes, and they can learn if you say whatever else, what do you think?, that they need to touch the other button. Which can be no.
So in that way, you can ask your dog a question while at the same time cuing them as to what the answer should be. Again, kind of falls under the dog training party trick category of things. But it's still a fun exercise. And I do think that people who are smarter than I can take the ability of a dog to touch a touchscreen with his or her nose and run with it to do some cool stuff.
But if all you ever do is work on just teaching them to do that hand touch and having that doodle buddy stamp make the noise of the marker, I think it is still well worth your while to put in a little time. Especially if you're just starting out with training or if you're working with kids, it's a great way to get them engaged because it is a sort of funny but truly useful way to see how important it is to capture behaviors with really good timing and use that kind of marker. What's going to become, you know, a secondary reinforcer, this marker, this little sound that the device is going to make use that in the same way that you would use a clicker, but without having to worry about getting the timing right yourself.
So go check it out at School for the Dogs on Instagram. I just posted in stories my day one challenge with Poppy which was the two of us. Well, it was me figuring out what kind of treats she was into. Thanks to everybody who had posted and tagged us yesterday. It was really cool. If you do participate tag @SchoolfortheDogs or use #DT21days.
And you can get the full course if you want to follow along in great depth right now through the end of April, totally for free, $97 value, just go to store for the dogs. I'm sorry. Yeah, you can go to the store for the dogs, but the link that'll get you there quicker is a SchoolfortheDogs.com/DT21days. And at checkout just use the code DT21days, and it will ring you up for the course at no extra charge. So you can do that if you want to get more information on each day of the training. And also you can skip ahead and see what comes next.
Lastly, just a quick announcement. If you are interested in becoming a professional dog trainer, I am talking to you. Wanted to let you know that we are maybe a week or two weeks away from officially announcing our summer 2021 professional program, which is going to be a six month program for aspiring trainers, all done virtually. And I will share more details next week when we actually get the website up, et cetera, or perhaps the week after.
But I am soft launching it here by letting you know you can go ahead and apply early if you go to SchoolfortheDogs.com/professionalcourseapplication again, more, yeah. Details to follow. Spaces will be pretty limited, but if you think this is something you might be interested in, definitely go head and apply sooner rather than later, SchoolfortheDogs.com/professionalcourseapplication.
All right. See you next week, or maybe see you posting your challenges on Instagram. Thanks for being here.
