Dog Training Basics

Posts Tagged ‘training dog tricks’

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.