Fresh Start Pet Coaching

Clicker training may or may not be a term that you have heard before. It is a very popular method of training dogs and other animals.

On January 4th, 2010 I will be launching a series of training videos on the blog that follow my puppy Rusty through his basic training. In those videos we will use clicker training to teach him commands.

What is clicker training and why do I prefer it to other training methods?
Clicker training uses a device like the one in the picture to create a clicking sound that is used to indicate to your dog that he has performed the correct behavior.

Let’s use sit as an example. When teaching your dog to sit you will push on the clicker to make the clicking noise as your dogs rear end touches the ground. In clicker training, timing is everything. The click and the behavior you are looking for need to occur at the same time.

Now, why does your dog care that you’ve made that clicking sound? Your dog cares because prior to introducing any commands you have paired that click with something your dog really loves such as his favorite treat or toy. To your dog, click = treat. There are two main essentials to clicker training: 1. you have to have good timing and 2. you have to have a reward that your dog will work for.

The process works like this for teaching sit:

1. Get your dog to sit

2. Mark the behavior as your dog sits

3. Give your dog a reward

Now to the rest of the question, why do I use clicker training? I use it because it’s fast. With all the dogs I’ve worked with and all the techniques I have tried, clicker training is the fastest and most efficient way to train a dog. Once you’ve gotten down the basic technique, you can use clicker train to teach him just about anything you would want to. Of course, results may very depending on the dog your working with, but I have yet to find a dog that doesn’t catch on eventually.

It is important to realize that just because you’ve taught your dog using the clicker doesn’t mean you’ll be dependent on it for ever.  In fact the opposite is true. Once your dog has learned that sit = butt on ground, you can stop using the clicker to mark that behavior.

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