Clicker Train Dog

Most everyone who trains a dog will agree on one thing. Attention is the most important thing you need to have! If your dog isn’t paying attention to you, there’s not a whole lot you can do with her.

Although trainers agree on the goal, how they get there can vary greatly. One common method is to teach a watch cue. The method I prefer is teaching my dog to offer attention. I call the game Find My Face.

It’s a very simple concept to teach and when conditioned properly is highly rewarding for both of you. The most important aspect of it however is it is an offered behavior. It is not requested, cued or forced. The dog learns by a process of shaping that the most rewarding thing in the world is looking at you. What could be better than that?

It does take some patience on the part of the trainer, but the rewards are huge and definitely worth it. Click here for a downloadable pdf with instructions on how to train Find My Face and try it yourself.

Happy Training!

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Here’s a short video with a demonstration of starting scent work with scent sticks.

You can see more of our videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/Toflaki

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I’ve spent some time training Kara to love her crate after watching a fabulous DVD called Crate Games by Susan Garrett. She is mostly known for her expertise in agility and her positive training methods. Her Crate Games are fantastic and a very effective way to teach your dog to love her crate.

The basic idea is to make the crate the most rewarding place ever. Susan shows you how to make it so reinforcing that often it’s hard to get them out of it! I experienced that with Kara. She caught on to the game very quickly and learned that staying in was better than coming out!

Here’s a short video of her going in from a short distance on a quick cue. We’d done a lot of the foundation work and I thought I’d try and see what would happen if I sent her in and called her out from a distance.

The skills learned in these games are very useful in a lot of situations. First of all they become comfortable in their crate when you go places like shows and the skills can be transferred to things like waiting at doors.

If you’d like to get the DVD for yourself, I highly recommend it. It’s available at Clean Run.

To see more of our crate training videos, visit our YouTube site at www.YouTube.com/toflaki.

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Pay attention to your dog when you’re training her.
If you want her attention, give her yours.

Be generous rewarding behavior you want.

Be quiet and don’t react to behavior you don’t want.
Turn away or stand perfectly still.

When your dog offers something you want instead, reward it immediately.

At the second the behavior you want happens, mark it with a click and follow with the treat. Wait to reach for the treat until after you mark it.

Behavior that is reinforced will repeat. Behavior that is ignored will decrease and eventually stop.

Train in a quiet, boring place where you are the most interesting thing going.

Have fun training. Make it the high point of both of your days!

The Perfect Training Session is:

• Short. 5-10 minutes is enough. You can do 2-3 sessions per day at different times.
• Devoted to one exercise at a time. You can do more than one exercise in one session, but make a clear break between them.
• Active. Keep your dog concentrating on you and the exercise you’re doing.
• Highly reinforcing. Lots of repetitions and lots of treats.
• FUN!

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To get the treat, you must give up the treat

I learned Doggie Zen from Shirley Chong, a wonderful trainer who has a number of exercises to help you develop impulse control in your dog.

Impulse control can be extremely useful not only in everyday life but in helping move your training forward. If you’ve had the experience of your dog offering or “throwing behaviors” without a cue, impulse control work can help. If you have a dog that is impatient during training like Ms. Kara is, you’ll find impulse control will help greatly. I just don’t move fast enough to suit the princess! So we spend a good deal of time on this exercise to develop this skill.

• Get out a treat that is good and smelly. Cheese works well for this, as does liver or Rollover-type stuff. Fix a few pieces that are small enough for you to cover in your closed hand.

• Let your dog see that you have a goodie in your hand, then close your hand over the goodie and let the dog sniff, lick, nibble, etc., trying to get the goodie. Eventually, the dog will give up. When the dog turns his head away from the goodie or steps back away from it, even if it’s just a temporary thing, catch that moment by marking it with Yes! [or a click] and open your hand to give him the treat.

• It’s important to leave your hand down at the dog’s level, perfectly accessible to him. Let him have a good chance to try to get the treat out of your hand on his own. If the dog gets too enthusiastic and is actually hurting you, say OUCH!, glare at him and pull your hand up out of his reach for a few seconds.

• Give the dog as many trials in as many different places as you can.

Remember too, that this is silent training. Don’t talk to your dog or try and get him to do the right thing. Let him figure it out on his own. It’s great fun. Come back and post your experiences when you’ve tried it.

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One of the most valuable skills you can have as a clicker trainer is the ability to observe what your dog does. If you have strong observation skills, you will be able to capture what you want your dog to do much easier. The timing of the click is all important in conveying to your dog what it is you want them to repeat.

Another valuable skill is to be able to observe without judging the behavior. By that I mean thinking of a behavior as good or bad. If you can remove making judgments from the training equation, it’s easier to shape behavior. And of course, judgments include those you make about yourself too. Nothing can hold a trainer back more than beating herself up for her inexperience or mistakes. We all make them and we all learn how to overcome them.

So here’s an excellent exercise to try in order to hone your observation without judgment skills.

Describe everything your dog does in 2 minutes and rate it wanted, unwanted, or neutral. Set a timer so you don’t have to watch a clock. You want to concentrate on your dog. Do this at a time when your dog is moderately active (you’ll get more to observe) and not focused on you. So don’t do it during a training session. You should pick a time when you are sitting reading or watching TV with your dog nearby.

Observe everything including sniffing, barking, lying down (how your dog does it, what position, etc.), looking at you or not, drinking, eating. Try to capture everything regardless of how small it is and write it down.This exercise will show you where you are, at this very minute, when it comes to observing your dog and also the variety of behaviors your dog exhibits. Put your list of what you observed in a safe place. Then in about a month do it again and compare your lists. It will be interesting to see if you observed more and what types of behavior your dog exhibits. Are there “default” behaviors?

If you’d like, post some of your results in a comment so we can see what kinds of things we are observing.

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Learning how to be a master clicker trainer is as much of a process for you as your dog. The most important thing you can do to become better is to keep learning. Read books, articles, this blog and if at all possible, watch a master trainer at work.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you train:

1. Know what behavior you are looking for and click only that. Remember, what you click is what you get and what you get is what you click whether it’s what you really wanted or not! Watch what your dog is offering to see if you really are training the behavior you want or something else.
2. Control where you train. Teach a new behavior in a very quiet environment where you are the most interesting thing going. When it is solid, take it to many different places, gradually increasing the amount of distractions.  Only when your dog can do the behavior correctly in many different places and under a lot of distraction does s/he truly “know” the behavior.
3. In the beginning, a new environment to the dog could just be a few steps away or turning around and looking the other way. Dogs don’t generalize so they need training in lots of different places for the behavior to be reliable.
4. Train small pieces of a complex behavior.  Don’t move on until the small pieces are reliable.  For example, a dog that cannot stay in one place with you at their side won’t be able to do it when you move away.
5. Establish and maintain a high rate of reinforcement.  Once you get a correct behavior, get another one as soon as possible. This will help solidify the behavior.
6. Have a plan for your training session.  Know what you are going to do, what you are looking for and what exactly you will click and treat.
7. Keep training sessions very short.
8. This is hands off the dog and your mouth shut training.  Give the dog time to figure out what you want and be quick to click and treat it.  Don’t talk and don’t give the cue more than once. Also don’t position your dog with your hands. They need to offer the behavior to really learn it.
9. Learn to analyze the results you’re getting. What did the dog do? What did I want the dog to do? Did I get what I wanted? Did I reinforce the right behavior?
10. Plan your next session as soon as you finish the one you are doing.

And most important of all, Have fun with the process!! There’s nothing more exciting than the communication you will develop with your dog.

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A classic clicker training article, 101 Things To Do With A Box comes from Karen Pryor. If you are new to Clicker Training this is an excellent exercise for both you and your dog. If you are switching training styles, this exercise can help you both learn the basics. And if you are an experienced trainer who hasn’t tried this yet, it’s great to develop your shaping skills.

It teaches the dog to try things on his own. She knows when she does the right thing because she will hear a click and get a treat. That will encourage her to try the same thing again. And it teaches you when to click based on your observations of your dog.

You can download the full article by clicking here.

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