So what will clicker training do for you and your dog?
What can I teach my dog to do with clicker training? Virtually anything!
Clicker training is a form of operant conditioning, the process that happens whenever any animal performs a behavior and then learnes from the consequences of it's action. The consequences the influence the behavior fall into one of three categories:
Positive Reinforcement: Something good happens as a consequence of the action performed and the result is the desire to do it again. For example, if you reach in a cookie jar and find a 20 dollar bill, you will probably want to reach in that cookie jar more often.
Positive Punishment: Positive punishment is when a negative input is presented as a result of the behavior . For example, if you plug a wet cord into the wall outlet with wet hands, you'll get shocked. You'll probably remember not to plug a plug into the outlet when it's wet again. The shock was the negative input presented when you plugged the wet cord into the outlet. Positive punishment goes hand in hand with negative reinforcement, you use positive punishment to achieve negative reinforcement just as you use rewards to achieve positive reinforcement.
Negative Punishment: Negative punishment is when a positive input is withdrawn or taken away as a result of the behavior. For example, if a puppy nips during play, you get up and ignore the puppy. Your taking away the play and your attentin, which is the positive input. The puppy will learn that if he wants to play, he musn't nip.
No Consequence: If the action has no consequence, it won't have any effect and the behavior performed will eventually die out (extinction burst). For example, you put money into a soda machine, push the button to get your Sprite, but nothing comes out. You may bang on the machine, shake it, kick it or body slam it, but it gets no result. You will not use that machine again and probably warn others that it's broken.
Clicker training is operant conditioning with positive reinforcement. Does your dog come running when he hears the can opener? You have unknowingly conditioned your dog to associate the sound of the can opener with getting fed, something he likes. If you were to start ringing a bell before you fed the dog, it would have the same effect. The dog has learned that something good (food) comes out of the bell's noise. Apply the same concept with the clicker. Once completely and properly conditioned, the dog will associate the clicker with positive stuff like food, praise, a toy or anything else that he likes. When you click a behavior, you are using positive reinforcement to encourage the dog to do it again.
The main reason clicker training works better than praise alone is because it is more precise. You can click faster than you can say "good dog". Timing is very important with clicker training. Click too soon or too late and you will teach your dog something different than what you think you're teaching. If your doing sit, you click the moment the dogs rump touches the floor. Too soon and may be teaching your dog to squat. Too late and who knows what the dog is thinking, looking at or doing when you manage to click. Now there's two types of punnishment, positive and negative. Positive punnishment is when you add something to stop a behavior, like a smack, hit, kick or slap. You will NOT be using positive punnishment at all with clicker training. In fact, it shouldn't be used at all. Negative punnishment is when you subtract something the dog likes to stop a behavior. Extinction bursts (discussed later) are a result of negative punnishment because you purposely neglect to click or somehow reward the dog when it's performing a behavior that was previously rewarded or awknowedged. A low, warning "no" is the only other thing you may need and thats only used for teaching certain commands or tricks. If you ask for a behavior but get what you want, simply don't click. Using "no" will only add confusion.
What about dogs that are overly food motivated? Many people have trouble using food as a reward because the dog becomes too focused on the food to pay attention to what is being taught. Clicker training eliminates this also. Although clicker training does/can involve food, the dog is working for the click, not the food. It is the click that brings the food, so even the most extreme food motivated dog will pay attention to what your trying to teach it because the click comes before the food.
There's also some skills and terms you will need to know to make training easier.
Extinction burst: An extinction burst is what happens when the action gets no consequence. For example, a dog that barks or howls at you to get what it wants. You ignore the dog, and the barking will get more desperate and more intense first. But if you continue to ignore it, the behavior will eventually become "extinct" because it gets no response. This tactic of ignoring is the solution to quite a few common behavioral problems including jumping on people and barking or howling at people to get something.
Occasionally an extinct behavior will reoccur. This is called a spontaneous recovery. It's a test to make sure your response to the behavior hasn't changed. Ignore it as usual and it'll disappear again; usually faster than the first time and it will usually stay gone longer.
Shaping: Shaping is manipulating and building a behavior by using frustration. For example, when teaching the retreive, you first click when the dog simply touches the object with his nose. Well, now he knows exactly what he's supposed to do when given that command, he goes and touches the object, but you don't click. The dog will become puzzled and will do it again, but still no click. Now he's frusterated and ready to try something different, desperate to get that click and reward (the beginning of an extinction burst). He goes beyond just touching it with his nose and actually picked it up in his mouth. Now you click. A few more times and you will have shaped the behavior from simply touching the object, to physically picking it up.
Building off other behaviors: There's quite a few complex tricks out there that build off one another. Teach one trick, then take small steps to acheive teaching your dog the entire act. Take "speak" for instance. Once you teach your dog to speak, you can build off that behavior and teach him to gaurd something by creating a circle around the dog and the object, giving the command "guard it" and whenever a hand is reached past the circle boundary line, commanding the dog to speak. He will soon learn that "guard it" means to bark whenever somebody's hand gets a certain distance from him and the object.
Capturing Behaviors: To teach certain behaviors, you may have to "capture" them. If you want to teach your dog to scratch himself (yes it's possible, i've done it) you watch for him to start scratching himself on his own. Once you see him doing the behavior, you click and treat. A really smart dog will pick up on what your clicking for very quickly. Just be patient and consistent. When the dog starts to offer the behavior to you just to get a click, thats when you know he learned what you were clicking for and now it's time to add the cue. When the dog is about to start scratching, say scratch and right after he starts scratching, click and treat.
What if you are trying to teach your dog a certain trick, like rolling over, and instead of rolling over completely, he stops halfway on his back with his feet sticking up in the air? Instead of ignoring it because it "isn't what you wanted" , you can capture it and teach him to play dead! This happened when I was teaching my own dog how to jump rope. Instead of jumping one time, she grabbed onto the rope with her mouth. I ended up not only teaching her to jump rope, but also to tug on command.
Fading: By now your probably wondering wether you have to click each and every time your dog performs the command. Of course not! Once a command is learned and followed reliably for the most part, you can fade the clicker, meaning you can drop the click for obeying that command and instead just reward your dog using a simple "good dog" and a pat on the head. Every so often, you can bring the clicker back into the picture to brush up on an old command.
As with all other training methods, clicker training has alot of misconceptions and "myths" attatched to it. This is mainly because people try it without having a full understanding of how and why it works. If you don't understand it and you don't clicker train properly, it certainly won't work, and that's how these misconceptions come about. So I've busted a few of the more common ones here.
Myth 1: If you clicker train, you sit around waiting for the dog to do something.
Truth: Wrong. Clicker training is just as interactive as any other training method. Sitting and waiting is of course an option, you can capture and build off whatever behavior the dog offers. For example, the dog turns his head towards the right and you click and you do that a few times. Then he takes a step towards the right, you click that and only that a few more times. One step becomes two, two becomes three. Doing that, you can free shape a 360 circle, or take it even further and target train. But when you look at it that way and how many steps go into training a dog like that, it's not so easy! For the most part though, clicker training is highly interactive and you will be actively guiding and encouraging your dog.
Myth 2: You have to click and treat EVERY TIME.
Truth: No, only when your first training the trick. The clicker is a training aid, it helps you to tell your dog exactly what it is he's being rewarded for. Once the dog realizes what he's being rewarded for, you can remove the clicker, he's made the connection between command and action. From there, you can fade out the treats as well, so eventually, you will have a dog that performs reliably wether you have food or not.
Myth 3: Clicker training doesn't work for dogs that are extremely food motivated because it's treat based and the dog is too focused on the food.
Truth: Another myth that is the product of a lack of understanding of the process. When a dog is properly clicker trained, he will be working for the click, NOT the food, at least not directly. It's the click that brings the food, so the click is the primary focus. In order to get the click, he has to focus on you and what it he needs to do to get the click. So clicker training actually works great on overly food motivated dogs because it allows you to use what motivates them the most. Best analogy I can make here is money. What do you go to work for? You go to work to get the paycheck, the money. But why? It's just paper or metal. You are actually working indirectly for food, TV, internet, toys, gadgets.....Things you can only get if you have money; that's the reason you are willing to work so hard for a piece of paper. Same goes for the dog. The click alone is worthless. But because that click brings the REAL rewards (like food), he is willing to work for the click.
Myth 4: You have to use food as the reward after you click
Truth: You can use whatever it is that motivates your dog and whatever he's willing to work for. This can be treats, it can also be a favorite toy, a chewy, a good scratch, a quick game of tug, a brief moment of silliness......Anything that motivates your dog can be used as the reward.
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