The Trick of the Click
Clicker Training
Trainers and dog owners all over the country are going clicker mad and there is some justification in their enthusiasm. It is fun, it is very effective and it is stress free for dog and owner. However I agree with a speaker at a recent seminar who proposed that the clicker was best suited for the fun times with your dog and not for control (i.e. obedience). The clicker requires that we wait for the dog to decide to do something that we can incorporate and shape into the final result This requires a lot of patience and most owners need to show the dog what is required for a given control exercise (i.e. Stay)
John Fisher, among others, has given us lots of soft and gentle ways of guiding our dogs into control exercises and these methods mean that the dog can learn more quickly and the owner doesn't need vast amounts of patience.
What is Clicker Training?
The most important thing to remember about the Clicker is that it is not a command or a warning it's a signal that says "Well Done"!
Clicker training is started by teaching the dog that the click means a treat. Just click and drop a small treat on the floor. When the dog hears a click and looks down for the treat instead of up at the click, you know he has learnt what the clicker means.
Now you can start on the party pieces. Don't start off with a goal in mind. Wait
and see what your dog does to try and make you hand over a treat and if you can see
the slightest opportunity to use the action and turn it into a trick -
Every tiny step on the way to a perfect conclusion is clicked and the dog rewarded, normally with a little treat. Take your time and because it's playtime, don't worry if it seems unproductive at first. You'll be amazed at the things your dog will do to get that click.
As an example:-
One evening I put a fluffy ball and an empty waste paper basket on the living room floor. I informed Connie that the game was on (click and drop the treat) and then sat back and waited. Connie knew that she had to do something to get the click, so she started experimenting.. Picking up the ball got a click. Drop the ball, collect treat, go back and pick up ball, no click, what else can I do?
Look around room and when looking at waste basket, got a click. Next time, when looking didn’t get a click, she moved towards the basket, click.
Each tiny step gives the dog a clue as to what might come next.
There was one point during this game Connie decided to try sticking her head (without the ball) deep into the waste basket. She waited, no click, so she gave that up and tried something else.
Cutting a fairly long story short Connie eventually dropped the ball into the basket and got a bonus of lots of treats. We then carried on playing this game with me telling her what she was doing and finally turning that into a command that she could obey.
A later trick for Connie was to shut the living room door on command when my wife or I noticed a draft. This just meant that old lazy bones here didn’t have to get out of his armchair to reach the door.
The possibilities are endless and fun. Your dog wants to use it’s brain. Your dog enjoys learning new things. The clicker has been used to teach dogs that something in the house it found very scary was not scary at all. This was done by clicking every time it got closer to the object. Eventually the problem had gone.
However you do not want to wait and wait and wait for your dog to ‘stay’ before you click. As stated above, there are much more satisfying methods you can use.
