Clicker training
Clickers can be an effective training tool. Whilst verbal commands and gestures can be used on their own to achieve successful training outcomes, clickers are particularly beneficial to some aspects of dog behavior training because they communicate immediately to your dog.
This means that when used consistently and by timing the click to the instant that your dog is behaving as you require, with practice they allow the introduction of additional stages in training a behavior which can be very useful at times. This is known as shaping the behavior. With experience, the trainer can use a click to signify the beginning of a behavior as well as its successful conclusion.
Two important rules for using a clicker are:
- Although it is good practice to reinforce the completion with a verbal confirmation such as “good” or “yes”, use of the clicker should continue unless it is no longer necessary. Your dog will be confused by any random combination or variation in use of rewards, verbal sounds or clicker and will not react as you require.
- Any training activity using the clicker must use it consistently and accurately every time the required activity is performed or again it will lose its meaning to your dog.
To introduce your dog to the clicker, clicking it as a reward is given will begin the process. Another way to encourage your dog to associate it with enjoyable activity is to click it as she returns a ball for example, if that is something she enjoys doing. As it becomes more familiar, then it can be associated with good behavior outcomes as part of the positive reinforcement process.
Over time, as you become more experienced, the clicker can be used before the conclusion of an activity so that your dog will begin to anticipate what is required. Given further time and yet more experience, you will find that fewer clicks actually produce a greater number of successful outcomes.
