What’s dog clicker training?

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If you are willing to train your dog you might consider using the ‘dog clicker training’ method, which has recently become popular among dog trainers all over the world.    In this method the trainer has to make use of a clicker, a small plastic box with a metal button that makes a unique click sound once the button has been pushed.

The training method is not only simple but also quite similar to the positive training method. This is what you have to do. Make up your mind as to what behaviour you want to reinforce or teach your dog. A dog will naturally perform certain actions such as eating, barking, sitting, standing, etc. and these need just to be reinforced to let your dog know when you want him/her to do what.

Several other actions such as acting dead, shaking hands, rolling over,do not come naturally to the dog and need to be taught.

Clicker training can be used to do both.

Clicker training functions according to the basic principles of operant conditioning, that is, by associating the sound of the clicker with some food which the dog particularly enjoys.

Now all you must do is use the clicker to command the dog to do something, the dog, given that he associates the click with the reward, immediately obliges and the training is complete.

Let’s take an example to explain the training of a dog with a clicker better, suppose you want to teach your dog to sit, you put a biscuit on your dog’s nose playfully and then move it upwards, the dog will obviously follow the movement of the cookie with its nose and will then naturally rest its haunches on the floor, thereby putting himself in a sitting position.

You must time your clicking to be so accurate as to occur right as the dog seats, and then give him/her the biscuit and praise it.

Go on doing this for some time till the dog starts to associate the clicking with the food until the click makes your dog sit without you luring him/her with treats.

Now teach him/her some other behavior, remembering to attach the clicking cue only once the animal himself produces the expected behavior, otherwise the clicking will not be connected to any particular behavior and the dog will be confused as to what it means.

Your dog is a clever little animal and it’s time you gave him/her the credit it deserves.

Some trainers have been known to use negative reinforcement techniques alongside the clicker method but this simply doesn’t work because punishment always creates a number of cases of unwanted behavior even if it serves the primary purpose of teaching the dog not to do something temporarily.

Any sort of training is a strenuous and rigorous process and needs time as well as patience.

Even though dog clicker training method is highly successful in general it might not work for some kinds of dogs, if you see that it’s not working for your pet you would be well advised to use some other technique to teach tricks to your dog.

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