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Some tips on becoming a great clicker trainer!
Clicker training is part of being a positive trainer. So far I have used the clicker for two completely different techniques. One technique is to teach the dog a trick or cue and the other is to start building positive associations for things that may scare my dog. Both methods have their own goal and at first I thought it would confuse the dog. Fortunately, he wasn’t even fazed!
First, charge the clicker. If the dog has never heard a clicker before, it can spook them. There are some tricks that can reduce the sound of the clicker so you won’t spook your dog when you start. One of those is to stick a little piece of cardboard inside the clicker to dull the sharpness of the sound. You want to build a *super* positive association to the click! Your dog should know that when he hears that sound, he WILL get a treat. So that brings me to my second point.
Second, timing is everything! Since your dog knows that he will get a treat every time he hears the click sound, you have to make sure the click is marking the correct behavior. If you are to fast or too slow, you’ll be marking the behavior he did right before or after (respectively) the behavior you meant to mark. With that said, if you do click at the wrong time you should still give a treat. You do not want your dog to hesitate when he hears the click and think “maybe I will get a treat, but maybe I won’t..” This will decrease his motivation to work for the click. One or two mess ups will not do much damage to your task at hand so do not fret about it!
Third, watch your dog. Lots of people look at their dog with out really seeing what is going on. Observe where your dog is looking – your hand or your eyes? Observe where he is in relation to your body – in front or beside you? Is he excited to be learning or does he look stressed? All of these observations may seem minor, but they are crucial to your dog’s learning.
These tips are important for teaching your dog new commands or cues. The other method I mentioned, building a positive association to a scary thing (“trigger”), uses the association built with the clicker to build better associations with triggers. With correction or aversive training, the dog would receive a jerk or shock at the neck to discourage barking, growling, or other nuisance behavior. With most dogs, this stops the behavior from occurring because the dog wants to avoid pain (naturally!). My dog, Loker, actually got worse and his intensity increased with every little bit of tension on the leash which is why I had to leave corrections in my past. The “Click the Trigger” method is much more relaxing and enjoyable than jerking your dog around.
When you “Click the Trigger”, you want to stay under threshold – meaning you want to stay far enough away to prevent your dog from acting up more than simply looking at the trigger. When the dog looks at the trigger, click immediately and treat! After some consistent practice, your dog will start up a habit of seeing the trigger and looking right to you for his treat instead of getting agitated. You can see how this method builds a new reaction to the trigger rather than just suppressing it. In the long run, you will worry much less and you will be able to relax while walking your dog – which is the goal right?!! 🙂
(Photo by Ellen Levy Finch under Creative Commons license. See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dog_clicker_training.jpg for details)
Courteous Canine Class
Today we went to the first class of a group class that focuses on teaching your dog to pay attention with distractions around. Loker totally surprised the heck out of me! He did so much better than I expected. His threshold was about 20 feet most of the time, so I kept that distance as best I could from any dog. I used a lot of “click the trigger” at the beginning and then he actually calmed down and became less reactive within a matter of minutes. I would click and reward for laying down, sitting, staying, making eye contact, and loose leash walking. Basically everything he did right! I am so proud of him! This new method makes training fun and relaxing instead of stressful and irritating!
We have been working on loose leash walking here in my neighborhood and Loker has been doing great, so I thought we needed to increase distractions. He has been doing almost perfect on the side-walk so I drove to a local park to practice walking on a new sidewalk, around some children at the play ground, and walking in grass without pulling. Or that is what I was expecting! Little did I know that on a beautiful and warm Friday afternoon all the children at the local elementary school would be at recess!!! There were certainly way more distractions than I had planned for but it turned out to be a great situation because the children stayed on the designated playground only.
We calmly walked around and passed the one man walking the trail a couple of times. He was stressed, lots of panting and trouble paying attention, but he did so much better than I would have thought or than he would have done a few months ago. Despite the huge distraction (about 50 or so screaming children) he listened to me as best he could. There was very little pulling and towards the end he did perfect in the grass. It is so nice to see all our hard work show in unexpected situations.
What brought the most relief was that I knew what to do in this situation which kept my own stress down. It was so nice to know I did not have to worry about correcting him for barking or pulling. Now that I am looking back, I am a much happier person – it is actually fun to work with my dog, it is something I look forward to everyday. Before I would stress about leaving the apartment because he would bark and put his hackles up at everything that moved. I would have to correct him which in turn would make him act more intense which then made me angrier. It is a vicious cycle that I am so happy to be free of. Now I get to act happy and fun to get his attention instead of yanking at his neck. Now he would rather look at me than the person coming down the side-walk. I can actually see him thinking and learning and, most of all, doing things because he wants to do it and because he knows how to do it – not because I told him to!
Tomorrow we begin a “Courteous Canines” class with a local trainer. I am hoping this class will be helpful in helping him focus when other dogs are around. We are not quite passed the reactivity on the leash yet, but this should help him learn to focus on me when he sees a dog. Today’s walk was a good trial run for tomorrows class. I know tomorrow will be a challenge, but with patience and delicious treats, I think we will be okay.
Here is a beautiful picture we took in the Blue Bonnets yesterday. Loker has a blast, he was jumping everywhere like a wild gazelle and nose diving at every good smell he caught a whiff of.
Here are some videos of my walk this morning with Loker. He never had a loose leash like this with any kind of correction collar and it is a joy to see him do something because he actually WANTS to! I am so happy for this challenge in my life – for my sake and for my dog’s sake!
In this video, I use a clicker to mark the behavior I want then follow it by a treat for the dog as the reward. This allows him to know WHAT he did right and that something right got him a yummy. The reward in this case – steak fries! I wasn’t gonna eat them so I figured why not?!
Clicker training is so easy that anyone can learn. Unlike correction based training, you don’t have to worry about doing it wrong and screwing up your dog. It is simple and once you have master the timing on the click, you can use this on any dog, for any trick, any where! Unfortunately, in this video you can’t hear me clicking. I am clicking for every few steps on a loose leash. Keep in mind I’ve already been working on him with this so I am not clicking as often as our first loose leash walking session. You can also see that when I stop, I want him to sit automatically in the video: Loose Leash Walking 2. He offers sitting at the heel position sometimes but I am reinforcing anywhere he sits when I stop. Also, I catch myself leaving my hand in the treat bag – this is not good as it encourages the dog to look at the treat bag waiting for treats instead of making eye contact with the owner. I am still learning! 🙂
Here are the videos:
Here is a “How to” video that you can use for your dog!
I hear of dog trainers using correction collars or e-collars on puppies all the time. To me there is something completely disturbing about that and that is one thing I never did as a correction based trainer. Collars like this are often used to teach obedience, to teach leash manners, among other things. Puppies learn best when you show them what to do instead of just telling them what not to do – just like children! Think about it, you see parents all the time at the grocery store or at a restaurant yelling at their kids to stop doing something inappropriate, but they do not give the kid something productive or positive to work on. They fail to give the kid a way to get attention in a positive manner, instead they just get angry at the child for not acting properly. It is exactly the same thing with puppies. You must show them a way to be successful before you even try to correct inappropriate behavior. This applies to chewing especially. Give your puppy something they ARE allowed to chew on and praise them when they do. If they get distracted by table legs or shoes, simply redirect them to the appropriate place to chew by rubbing some yummy peanut butter or cream cheese on the toy. SPECIAL TIP: Ice Popsicle sticks mixed with a tad bit of Gatorade are a great way to sooth your puppy’s mouth as they lose puppy teeth and get their adult teeth in.
Another thing to remember about puppies is that they have short attention spans. Not super short, but like an adult dog, after a while they get tired and want to quit working on training. You want to make sure you keep training fun or they will learn to ignore you. Teach them commands like Sit, Down, Come, and Stay in super short training sessions (like <5 minutes at a time) that happens several times a day.
Here are some extra resources on puppy training that I would encourage you to read.
The Crossover Trainer 
