Dog Training Basics

Posts Tagged ‘Clicker Training’

Training is without a doubt a critical component of a great relationship between any dog and its owner. Even when you adopt an older dog who has a complete arsenal of commands mastered, practice sessions will not just reinforce those commands but develop a stronger rapport between you. Your pet will enjoy the time spent together, having a task to do, as well as the exercise of body and mind – if you approach training properly.

When a puppy enters your life, training is even more vital. You will have a canine blank slate ready to become shaped into a well-behaved dog; and when you overlook reinforcement of appropriate behaviors as well as the drawing away from undesirable behaviors, odds are you will end up with an out-of-control terror by the time your puppy is full grown.

In dog training, you might hear the phrases positive and negative reinforcement. The major difference is substantial, and though negative training was previously widely used, the great results obtained by positive reinforcement has made it mostly the training approach of choice. For instance, when you’re potty training the dog, negative reinforcement would have you scold and discipline your dog when it made a mess on the carpet. Positive, however, would have you praise and reward your dog for relieving itself in the correct area. Offering your pet a specific objective with a desirable reward is a lot more efficient in generating wanted behaviors. Clicker training is the strategy of positive reinforcement employed by lots of professional trainers.

In standard clicker training, two components are utilized to steer the pet towards the actions you want: a clicker as well as a reward. In due course your dog should come to realize that the clicking noise signifies that it has performed the right thing and will quickly be given a reward. Because the clicker produces a far more unique and quicker sound in comparison with using a verbal cue such as “good dog” and is much less likely to occur in casual conversation, it is going to help your pet learn much more quickly precisely when it accomplished what you wished. The reward can be anything at all that motivates your pet to work, from food to a favorite toy. The real key in puppy clicker training is the fact that the dog associates that click with the forthcoming treat.

To start clicker training, do not ask your puppy to do anything at all. Just click and reward until such time as your dog definitely sees that the two are linked. Next, whenever you notice your dog doing anything you would wish to develop into a command, click just as soon as you notice the action, followed by the reward as well as a verbal cue. As an example, if your dog sits, click and reward. After a few repetitions, add “good sit” while you give the reward. Puppy clicker training is not just helpful for such obedience commands as sit, come, and down, but also for virtually any behavior you might find cute, like sneezing, head tilting, or bowing.

Whether your dog will achieve its adult size at 10 pounds or 110 pounds, puppy clicker training will certainly help make certain you end up with a happy, well-behaved companion as opposed to an anxious and stressful problem pet.

Are you looking for effective puppy training advice? Be sure to visit my site for help in stopping puppy barking and tips on how to stop puppy biting.

Raising and training a family dog can be a good or bad experience depending on your ability to successfully communicate with your dog. A serious problem in training a family dog is the fact that individual family members will often give diverse signals to your dog. Even if the same words are used the tone of voice may vary which causes confusion for your dog and a confused dog behaves erratically since he is not sure what is expected.

Your dog’s confusion will escalate if he is reprimanded for not following a command he does not understand. Your dog may become aggressive if his confusion continues over a period of time.

Clicker training is an excellent way to eliminate confusion. The principles of clicker training are easy to comprehend for every member of your family. Communication between your family and your dog is greatly improved with a clicker and therefore your dog will better understand what you want him to do. Since your dog can trust a clicker to be consistent he is motivated to learn to comply with the commands of anyone using a clicker.

The focus, in clicker training, is on rewarding proper behavior. You must figure out what you want your dog to do and then reinforce that behavior. If you don’t want your dog to bark then you reward him only when he is quiet. You focus on the behavior you want and you ignore the behavior you don’t want.

You click the clicker as soon as your dog does what you want him to do. This is quickly followed by a treat which reinforces the desired behavior.

This does not mean you allow bad behavior. You must stop bad behavior, when it occurs, but you then need to reward the behavior you want. An example would be if your dog puts his paws on your coffee table.  You would remove his paws from the table and when all of his paws are on the floor you would give a click followed by a treat. Every time your dog performs the correct behavior you give a click followed by a treat. It will soon become apparent, to your dog, that a click and a treat follows the behavior you want. Your dog will start finding ways to please you so he can recieve the treat that follows a click.  In this way he becomes an active participant in his own training. This is a great benefit in learning to clicker train your dog.

Once a behavior is well established you can add a hand signal or a verbal phrase. The hand signal, word, or phrase becomes the cue your dog will follow when you want him to behave a certain way. In order for your cue to be effective it must apply to one specific task. You should not use a general cue such as “good boy” but you should pick a specific word or phrase such as “quiet,” “good quite,” or “sit.” There must be only one cue for one action.

When you introduce the cue you only use the clicker and treat after you cue the task you want your dog to do. When your dog has a good understanding of the cue you will no longer need to use the clicker and the treats. Your praise and attention will be your dog’s reward at this stage.

The entire family can be part of clicker training. Children take to clicker training very easily.

If you use a clicker correctly it is a fantastic training tool. Consider making a clicker part of your dog training program. Dog training takes time, patience and consistency.  Clicker training is no exception but it is worth learning. You will find that clicker training is fun for both your dog and your family and an excellent aid in teaching your dog tricks.

Clicker training’s origins go back to the 1930′s. Clicker training is the use of sound to strengthen desired behavior through positive reinforcement. An example of the use of clicker training techniques can be found in the training of dolphins by marine biologists. However, in training dolphins an air horn was used instead of a clicker because sound is muffled the deeper a dolphin went underwater. The training of dolphins was very successful and they quickly understood the tasks they were expected to perform. Today clicker training is being used to train almost every animal imaginable; dogs, cats, birds, horses, as well as wild animals.

Clicker training has one main difference from traditional dog training. Reprimanding inappropriate behavior is commonly used in traditional dog training. Bad behavior is ignored in clicker training and good actions are rewarded. Clicker training is based on the idea that animals will do whatever they can to please their trainer. inappropriate behavior by an animal is usually the result of poor, ineffective communication by his trainer.

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What is a Clicker?

Clickers, that will do the job, are simple, inexpensive mechanical devices that make an identical sound every time they are pressed. Used properly the clicker produces a motivational incentive for an animal to repeatedly complete tasks.

Basics of Clicker Training

Using conditioned reinforcement an animal learns to control the click, and accompanying reward, by performing as requested. The training of an animal accelerates when he has the aha moment and realizes that he can control when the clicker is going to click. Using conditioned reinforcement this understanding will eventually occur with all animals.

Since dogs are intelligent they quickly understand that they are able to control the click of the clicker. When a dog hears the click sound he soon understands that it means he did a good job and deserves a treat. A dog quickly develops various skills when the techniques and principles of clicker training are utilized.

Training sessions should be limited to less than 15 minutes because your dog can only focus for short periods of time. Short training sessions can be repeated a number of times through the day. When you show your dog the task you want done and he performs that task the clicker clicks and a treat is given to your dog. You gently move your dog through a desired task until he will perform it without the clicker or the treat.

Clicker training benefits your dog by helping him to learn, think and adapt. Training is faster because you can communicate the desired task more effectively and your dog is motivated to learn.

For more information on Clicker Training remember to click on: Can I Clicker Train My Dog?

All Family Members Can Use Clicker Training

When a dog receives mixed signals from family members he becomes confused. This confusion will not happen using the clicker training techniques. The concepts behind clicker training can be understood by all family members, even young children. When a clicker trained dog exhibits bad behavior he can be encouraged, by any family member, to correct his behavior with a signal or command accompanied by the clicker. When all the members of your family understand what to do there is better communication with your dog.

Clicker Training is Fun

Clicker training increases the personal relationship between trainer and dog. You and your dog become more responsive to each other. A strong bond is created between you and your dog.

Clicker training is fun. Tasks are learned quickly, by your dog, because of clear communication. Since you quickly see results from your training sessions training your dog becomes enjoyable. It is a win/win situation for both you and your dog.

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Clicker training for dogs is one of the more systematic methods in dog training. It’s based on research done in behavioral psychology and the method is referred to by psychologists as operant conditioning. But you don’t need to know technical terminology in order to benefit from the method.

The method was first developed with marine mammals. With the dolphins, a whistle made the sound rather than a clicker. You can imagine how difficult it is to train a dolphin compared to a dog. The whole method is based on positive reinforcement. It was very difficult to give a treat to a dolphin at the precise time the dolphin did the behaviour you wanted. However, you could easily blow a whistle at the precise time. Then you could follow that with a fish shortly afterwards.

In order to reward a wanted behavior, you should reinforce it at the precise moment it happens or very soon afterwards or the animal will not relate the reward with the action. The whole reward process is made so much easier and clearer by using a sound from a whistle or clicker to mark the action.

Firstly, you must positively connect the sound of the clicker with getting a treat. You do this by repeating the process of clicking and following the sound with a treat. Once this connection is made, the clicker sound itself becomes like a reward because it’s so closely linked with the treat in the dog’s mind. This process is called charging the clicker by dog trainers.

Now that the clicker is charged, you use the clicker when the dog does a behavior you want and you always follow with a treat. In true clicker training, you allow the behavior you want to occur naturally and click and reward. In order to do this more complicated behaviors need to be broken down into smaller chunks. A tool which helps to do this is the target stick.

One of the first exercises in clicker training is to get your dog to touch the target stick with his nose. Once your dog accomplishes this, the stick can be used to direct your dog to a particular place. This is really useful in training other behaviors.

Getting your dog to touch the stick is easy. If you put it in front of his nose, he will probably touch it. Then you click and reward. Be sure to let your dog to touch the stickof his own free will! Repeat this for a couple of minutes. Then have a break.

It can take a while when a dog is introduced to clicker training, especially if he is an older dog. So you need to be patient. You may need to repeat the target stick session a couple of times before he gets the connection. But once he’s got it, the learning will stick.

One other tool which clicker trainers find useful is a mouse pad or something similar that you train your dog to stand on with one of his front feet. You can get your dog to do this easily by just putting it down on the ground near him and waiting for him to stand on it. As soon as he does it, click and reward. As before, repeat this until your dog gets it. As with the target stick, this tool can then be used to direct your dog to a particular place in subsequent training.

Once a behavior has been trained, the next step is to add a cue. A cue means that you assign a verbal request like “sit” or “stay” to the behavior. You do this by saying the cue word just as you think the dog is about to do the wanted behavior. As always you click and reward the behavior. Then, by repeating this, the command becomes associated with the treat, just like the clicker sound is. Please note that when you start training with the cue, you only click and reward when the behavior follows the cue. You don’t click or reward when the dog offers the behavior without you having given the cue.

I hope this has given you some idea of how the clicker is used as an effective tool in dog training. Obviously there is a lot more to learn. What I love about it is that it’s very systematic and all that’s needed is patience and consistency. Read more about clicker training with dogs, a review of the clearest clicker training guide, and also reviews of other dog training guides.

vicky asked:


I have a 7 month old Belgian Malinois and I want to teach him some simple tricks. I don’t intend to make him a protection dog. I know it’s quite costly. I was able to teach him some obedience training like sit, stay, fetch etc. and I’m using the reward method and I find it ok. I’m just curious. Is clicker training better?

Shaura