The Basics Of Clicker Training

Posted by Jeff Chandler in Puppy Training on June 28, 2010 | no responses

Clicker training is one of the most rewarding and easiest methods for training your dog. Since clicker training uses positive reinforcement, your dog, puppy or pet will quickly learn the behavior your are teaching. Here are a few things to you need to understand about clicker training.

Clicker training consist of several basics including positive reinforcement, clicker conditioning, often called charging the clicker, accurate timing and marking and repeating. It’s by means of these principles that one could rapidly start teaching your dog with a clicker with excellent results.

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Positive reinforcement means that you are rewarding your dog when they perform a behavior or action that you want them to perform. This is different than luring or bribing your dog to perform a specific action. Using positive reinforcement with clicker training, we are actually allowing the dog to perform the action on their own, and the click and treating them when they do it correctly. Postive reinforcement is faster and easier than correction based training where we are trying to stop the dog from doing something, like jumping or biting. An example of positive reinforcement may be when a dog or puppy sits down on their own when we are training a “sit” comment and we reward them for that action.

Clicker charging is the method of training your canine the noise of clicker and that a reward will be provided at the noise of the click. The first few training times may require you to charge the clicker, but after the third or fourth period it won’t be necessary. To charge the clicker you simply click the clicker and then provide a reward to the puppy. Repeat this 10-15 times until the clicking sound leads to your puppy to search for the treat. As soon as the puppy realizes that the sound of the clicker “represents” whenever they will get a treat the teaching can start.

Proper timing is essential with clicker training. In order to tie in positive reinforcement while using a clicker, we need to time the click, or “mark” the behavior. For example, when training the “sit” command we can click the minute the puppy is sitting down. This means the second their butt touches the ground, you click. This “marks” the behaviour so you would then instantly treat. If you ever click a second or two later the dog might not know what they did. Should you treat and then click, you’re reinforcing the incorrect action. So, timing is everything. Again, with this example, we’re permitting the dog to sit on their own, then we’re marking the actions with a click after which treating.

Repetition and continuous training will help you clicker train your dog with more success. This allows your dog or puppy to easily understand and begin learning on their own exactly what behavior you want them to perform. You can then begin mixing behaviors. For instance, you may begin teaching a sit behavior. After mastering the sit command, you would move on to the “lay down” command going from a sit. You could then command the dog to sit, then lay down and click.

Once you learn these 4 primary ideas of clicker training it is easier to begin to teach other types of behaviors . More complex behaviors could be included together and the usage of target training can be introduced to permit your canine to concentrate on particular items or positioning to create a behavior. These four concepts in addition to four secrets and techniques that every trainer should know can be located at the http://ClickerTrainingSystem.com web site.

Want to find out more about Clicker training, then visit Jeff’s site and get instant access to two Clicker training videos and get started training your dog today.