Successful Clicker Training For Your Dog

If you are looking for a way to train your dog you might consider using the ‘clicker training’  method, which has recently become popular among dog trainers all over the country.   With this method, the trainer uses a clicker, which is a tiny plastic box with a metal button that makes a distinctive click sound when the button is pressed.  This training method is simple and  in many ways parallel to the positive training method. 

With Clicker Training, you will decide on a certain behavior you want to teach or a behavior you want to reinforce in your dog.   A number of behaviors/actions come naturally to the dog like sitting, eating, standing, barking etc. These actions/ behaviors need to be reinforced so your dog will know when you want him to do the action. Various other actions like acting dead, shaking hands, rolling over etc. do not come naturally to the dog and need to be taught.  Clicker training can be used to do both these types of training.

Clicker training works according to the basic principles of operant conditioning, by associating the sound of the clicker with a food item which the dog particularly likes.   First, say what you want your dog to do, such as “sit”.  Do not push his bottom onto the floor.  Instead, use a treat to coax the dog into the sitting position by holding it in front of his nose and moving it upwards to above his head.  The dog will obviously follow the movement of the treat with his nose and will naturally put himself into a sitting position.   At the very second that the dogs bottom “sits”, click the clicker, give him lots of praise and give him the treat.   Continue doing this for sometime until the dog begins to associate the clicking with the food and  until the click makes him sit without you luring him with a treat.  You can now teach him another behavior.  It is important to remember to click the clicker only once the animal himself offers you the behavior,  otherwise the clicking will not be connected to anything in the dog’s head and he will be confused about what it means.

Your dog is one smart little animal and you will be amazed at how quickly he picks up new behaviors.  A number of trainers have been known to use negative reinforcement techniques alongside the clicker training method.  However, this simply doesn’t work because punishment at all times creates a number of unwanted behaviors even if it serves the primary purpose of teaching the dog to not do something temporarily.

Any type of training is a strenuous and rigorous process and needs plenty of time and patience.   It is best to limit your sessions to five minutes at the beginning to no more than ten minutes as you progress.  If your dog stops giving you attention, stop and try again later.  Although the clicker training method has a high success rate, it might not work for certain types of dogs.   If you see that it’s not working for your particular pet,  you would be well advised to try another technique to train your dog.  I have used the clicker training method to train my two rottweilers and my pitt bull.  It has worked perfectly and quickly with both breeds of dogs.  So make sure you give this method a fair amount of time before deciding it is not working for your dog.

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