Ten Tips for Clicker Training
Clicker training is a science-based way to communicate with your pet. It's easier to learn than standard command-based training.
Puppies love it and old dogs CAN learn new tricks!
There is only one rule: Every click must be followed by a treat.
Key tips:
1. Keep the treats small. Use delicious treats when starting clicker training or teaching something new, e.g. little cubes of cheese,
hot dog sausage, ham or chicken, not a lump of kibble or dry commercial dog treats.
2. Click once (in-out.) If you want to express special enthusiasm, increase the number of treats, not the number of clicks.
3. Keep practice sessions short. Much more is learned in three sessions of five minutes each than in an hour of boring repetition.
You can get dramatic results, and teach your pet many new things, by fitting a few clicks a day here and there in your normal routine.
4. Don't wait for the "whole picture" or the perfect behaviour. Click and treat for small movements in the right direction.
You want the dog to sit, and it starts to crouch in back: click. You want it to come when called, and it takes a few steps your way: click.
5. Keep raising your goal. As soon as you have a good response - when a dog, for example, is voluntarily lying down, coming toward you,
or sitting repeatedly - start asking for more. Wait a few beats, until the dog stays down a little longer, comes a little further, sits a little faster.
Then click. This is called "shaping" a behaviour.
6. When your animal has learned to do something for clicks, it will begin showing you the behaviour spontaneously, trying to get you to click.
Now is the time to begin offering a cue, such as a word or a hand signal. Start clicking for that behaviour if it happens during or after the cue.
Start ignoring that behaviour when the cue wasn't given.
7. Don't order the animal around; clicker training is not command-based. If your pet does not respond to a cue, it is not disobeying;
it just hasn't learned the cue completely. Find more ways to cue it and click it for the desired behaviour.
Try working in a quieter, less distracting place for a while.
8. If you are not making progress with a particular behaviour, you are probably clicking too late. Accurate timing is important.
Get someone else to watch you, and perhaps to click for you, a few times.
9. Fix bad behaviour by clicking good behaviour. Click the puppy for relieving itself in the proper spot.
Click for paws on the ground, not on the visitors. Instead of scolding for making noise, click for silence.
Cure leash-pulling by clicking and treating those moments when the leash happens to go slack.
10. Above all, have fun! Clicker-training is a wonderful way to enrich your relationship with your pet.
Adapted from Karen Pryor’s work
By Carol Clark