Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Clicker Training Tips

When you are clicker training a dog you get so focused on clicking and treating. The question is will your dog respond to your request if you have no treats and no clicker.

When your clicker training your dog you will have to vary your rewards so that not every time your dog gets a treat. Maybe every two or three behaviors and they get a treat. But in order to keep the clicker stimuli working correctly you will always have to treat if you click. So make them perform a couple of behaviors then click.

An example of too much clicking on the first behavior: Tanner knows how to play dead when you point your finger and say bang. If I don't have a treat or a clicker then he won't respond. He has learned that he doesn't want to do the trick if I am not going to reward with food.

Work on varying your dog's reward so they don't know when the will be rewarded and don't forget to use praise or petting as a reward too.

1 comment:

  1. Excellent advice. It's so easy to fall into the groove of click and treat, especially when you're getting results with it; but keeping it unpredictable is the only way to truly reinforce the behavior for its own sake.
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