Clicker Training

[Lizmo]

Okay, so I have some knowledge of clicker training. Blaze has never been introduced to one, and I'd like to give it a try.

Click/treat, right?

[CaliTerp07]

Yup

Pretty darn simple!

[Maxy24]

Yup, click and treat. First teach him to do simple things like touching your hand with his nose over and over and pawing at things. Add commands. I don't put these under full stimulus control as there are the things I want her to offer during a training session. When I start a shaping session i sit on the floor and if there is any prop I put that on the floor and I wait, first thing she'll do is run over and slap it with her paw or poke it with her nose. Generally I will be having her use either her paw or her head in the trick and so one of those is usually clickable. I really recommend free shaping (just wait, give no cues or lures, until the dog makes some sort of move in the general direction of the behavior. If you want the dog to jump on a chair you might start by clicking for glances at the chair, then leaning towards the chair, then moving towards the chair, even one step, then pawing the chair, etc. until she finally jumps up, then JACKPOT) once the dog "gets" clicker training. Remember once the dog understands what the click means a few seconds may go by between the click and treat so stop having treats on your body, put them over on a table or counter so the dog gets used to being rewarded without seeing the treats on your body.

Use Jackpots (multiple treats one after the other) when the dog finally goes up to a new level, especially from a level he was having difficulty leaving. For instance while free shaping Phoebe to stand with her front paws up against a wall it took her a long time to move on from putting one paw on the wall to finally putting two paws up. Eventually she put a paw up and added pressure so her second paw lifted ever so slightly up, she got a click and a jackpot. she was told THAT RIGHT THERE was exactly what I was waiting for, that is a really, really awesome thing to do, better than what you did before, do it again.

[Criosphynx]

be prepared for an addiction....

[Southpaw]

Maxy pretty much hit it... and I just want to elaborate that I would NOT charge the clicker in the traditional sense where you just c/t over and over and over again. Charge it by teaching something simple like targeting. Otherwise, if you just c/t over and over for 5 minutes, and then try to use the clicker to teach something, you essentially end up charging the clicker two times: the first time you taught him that the reward was independent of his behavior, and then when you tried to teach a command, he needed to learn that the reward was dependent on his behavior. It just takes longer to get things moving along if you need to rewire how the dog perceives the noise.

Make sense?

I learned that the "hard" way with Juno. I sat there and would c/t for a while, then she started looking at me whenever she heard the click so I thought all right, she gets it. So I tried to teach her Sit I think, and we weren't making any progress. The good folks on Chaz told me it was because she didn't understand that it's her behavior that earned her the reward, so then I took a step back and worked on targeting with her, and miraculously things all of a sudden "clicked" with her.

It's a really fun thing to do and hard to truly mess up. Really the most difficult part is getting your timing down, but I screw up with that ALL the time lol and my dog's are still able to learn what I want just fine lol. And they're not the brightest.