Clicker Training For Dogs

This article will cover clicker training for dogs.
1. Always Follow a Click with a Treat. Always.
Always immediately follow a click with a treat. Even if you clicked accidentally. Even if you clicked a behavior you would really rather not strengthen. Remember, the click in itself means nothing to your dog--she could care less about it. She learns to pay attention to it because it reliably predicts food. Food keeps dogs alive and consequently food does matter in its own right. Every click that’s not followed by a treat weakens the clicker’s reliability as a predictor of food. The less reliable the clicker is, the less relevant it is to your dog. And by the way, that’s not all-- a predictable, reliable world is important to animals, and there’s some evidence that dogs will check out of the training process when the demon of unreliability shows up.

2. Teach Your Dog That Responding to You Is the Key to Getting Treats
Keep the treats irrelevant. That may seem a funny way of putting it, since you’re rewarding your dog with treats, but bear with me a sec. How often do you hear someone say her dog will do X only when he knows she has a treat? To avoid that problem, do two things. One, carry treats around and … don’t train. Lesson for your dog: The presence of treats does not necessarily predict an opportunity to get hold of them. Two, stash treats in sealed containers around your house or in your training area. Ask your dog to do whatever behavior you’re working on, click, and deliver a treat from your secret stash. Aha! says Dogalini. Just because my human doesn’t seem to have any treats handy doesn’t mean I can’t get a treat by doing what she asks. What does predict a chance of treats? Doing what the human asks.

Of course, it’s fine to whip out some treats in plain view of your dog and start a training session. Just be sure to mix up the scenario often enough so your dog doesn’t learn she can always and only earn treats when she sees them upfront.

3. Don’t Use the Clicker to Get Your Dog’s Attention
The clicker has one job: to tell your dog exactly what behavior is earning treats right now.

Think of the clicker as an asterisk or a spotlight, not as a remote. The clicker is for one thing and one thing only, and that is to illuminate for your dog exactly what behavior is earning treats right now. People who are new to training their dogs often notice that the click gets their dog’s attention, and then they start using the click to … get their dog’s attention. This works if you always follow the click with a treat, but it also winds up teaching the dog to do more of whatever he was doing when you tried to get his attention. Note that this is different from clicking and treating when your dog offersyou his attention in the first place
4. Teach in Small Steps

Picture the behavior you want your dog to do, and also all the steps along the way to the well-trained behavior. Work slow and steady. For instance, suppose you’re teaching your dog to stay. And say your goal is for her to lie down while you answer the door and sign for a delivery. That goal has several components, and if you pile them all up at once your dog will be in the position of a human being who’s just been plunked down in front of a piano for the first time and told to play “Rhapsody in Blue.” It ain’t happening. Teach Dogalini to lie down in the first place, then to lie down for longer and longer periods, then to lie down while you walk away from her, then to lie down while you walk toward the door, then to lie down while you open the door and talk to an imaginary person. Have a helper ring your doorbell while you reward your dog generously for lying down.

Break down behaviors into tiny steps, work on one step at a time, and make sure your dog is performing confidently and reliably at each step before you go on to the next. Trust me on this--training in tiny increments might seem laborious at first, but it works much, much better in the long run. You wind up with a dog who responds reliably to your cues instead of a dog who isn’t really sure what you’re asking her to do or why it’s worth her while to do it. 

5. Use the Clicker to Teach New Behaviors

The clicker is for teaching new behaviors and refining behaviors you’ve already taught. Say Zippy lies down 95% of the time when you say “Zippy, down.” In that case you don’t need to click and treat every time he hits the floor. Start singling out stellar performances by clicking and treating only when he lies down super fast. Or when he stays lying down while you bounce a tennis ball in front of him. Or when he lies down a foot, then two feet, then five feet away from you. Eventually, when Zippy routinely drops like a stone and stays put while the Cirque du Soleil turns squirrels loose in your living room, you won’t need to click unless you decide Zip needs a refresher course for some reason.

6. Always Reward Your Dog’s Good Behavior

But never, ever stop rewarding. Once Dogalini has learned that “Dogalini, come!” means “Head for my human as fast as my little legs will carry me, no matter what,” we’re often tempted to take those brilliant performances for granted. Please don’t! You can save the roast chicken for those precious moments when you call Dogalini and she comes to you pronto even though Cirque de Soleil has released a dozen gymnastically trained squirrels right in front of her nose. But stay generous with the delighted happy talk, the play, and the butt scritches (or whatever your Dogalini enjoys).

so now you have sufficient information about clicker training for dogs, you should start implementing. 

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Dog Training With A Clicker

A dog training method called clicker training has become popular over the last several years. Clicker training differs in several ways from standard dog training. Dogs are not deprived of food. Food is only used for primary reinforcement. Punishment and negative reinforcement are avoided as much as possible in clicker training. Also, the training sessions are brief. The practice sessions should last less than five minutes each. Clicker trainers feel that dogs will learn more over several short sessions than over one long session that might get tedious and cause the dog to lose interest. Studies have also shown that establishing reliable behaviors with clicker training requires significantly less time than with standard dog training. Another difference is the use of a clicker as a behavior marker.

The click trainer clicks when the dog performs a certain action such as sitting. After the click, the trainer gives the dog a reward. Eventually, the dog will associate the click with the reward. The reward can be food such as hot dogs or roast beef, petting, playing with a tennis ball, or anything else your dog may enjoy. If you want to use a food reward, you must make sure that you use small pieces of food because you do not want your dog to be preoccupied with eating and forget about the clicker dog training. Also make sure that your dogs meals do not precede a clicker training session otherwise the food rewards will not work. It is important to remember that you must click during and not after the desired action. When the reward is given is not crucial.

A click is more powerful for training than a spoken word because it is a unique sound that signifies that a reward is coming. It can provide a precisely timed signal to mark good behavior at the exact moment that it occurs. This will allow the dog to know exactly what it was doing. Words can be spoken in different ways and express different emotions each time but the sound of a click never varies. Dogs and other pets have problems telling the differences among the many words that they hear everyday but they do not have problems determining the meaning of a click.

If you want to train your dog to come running to you when called, do not wait until the dog is actually running to you before you click and reward the dog. You should click and reward the dog even if it only takes a few steps in your direction. After the dog has demonstrated that it can repeatedly perform this action, you can try to coax your dog into walking a little closer to you before you click and reward it. You should allow your dog to do everything on its own without pushing or pulling it. You can also use click dog training to cure your dog of inappropriate behavior. Instead of berating your dog when it does something inappropriate such as relieving itself on your carpet, you can click and reward the dog when it acts appropriately.

When your dog reaches a point where it will spontaneously show you the behavior that earns it a click and a reward, the clicker trainer should teach the dog a cue. The cue can be a hand signal or a word. To teach the dog the cue, the trainer will say or signal the cue before the dog repeats the behavior. If the behavior occurs during or after the cue, then a click and reward is given. If the dog does the behavior without the cue, no click is given. If the dog does not perform the behavior after the cue is given, then maybe the reward needs to be changed or the cue needs to be relearned in an environment with less distractions. Also, while clicker dog training, do not verbally or physically abuse the dog even if it is not performing as it should. This may cause the dog to lose confidence in you and the clicker training.

The clicker and rewards can be put away once the behavior follows the cue on a consistent basis. The behavior can be maintained by replacing the expensive rewards with a less costly reward such as a pat on the head. Only bring out the clicker and rewards to train your dog to learn a new behavior or relearn an old behavior.

Since clicker training does not rely on punishment or negative reinforcement to get results, it is the only method of dog training that can be safely and effectively used with puppies that are weeks old. At this point, clicker training is not a universally practiced dog training method but more trainers are using clicker training to teach basic obedience and other classes.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Dog Training

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Russell

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The Clicker Way

If youve already been searching for ways to help get your dogs ego under control, you may have stumbled across something called Clicker Training. This method is by far one of the easiest ways that I have tried, and I personally used this to train my Blue Heeler, Skyebird.

After using these clicker methods I was able to train Skye to be obedient, and not only does she know that I am the dominating presence but the clicker methods are also effective for training dogs to perform. Rolling over, barking on command, I even have her shake her head, and I did it all with by Clicker Training. Whats even more amazing, is now I dont need the clicker to be able to get her to follow instructions. Shes well mannered and behaves in all situations, and now I dont have to worry about her like I use to.

These methods are easy to learn and even easier to use. Its not an overnight fix to your dogs problems, but through habitual practice your dog will begin to listen more and become more obedient.




With the book Clickertraining: The 4 Secrets of Becoming a Supertrainer you will learn everything you need to know to train your dog to be obedient enough to perform in shows. Ive won 5 blue ribbons in local competitions with Skye and while I havent performed recently, Skye is still just as obedient as when we practiced often.

This book is one of the best Ive ever read and the authors, a married couple from Norway, have gone through the same hardships that you and I have, and when they found a method that worked, they decided to write it all down to help you learn a proven working method for Dog Training .

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