Positive Reinforcement and Clicker Training

Positive Reinforcement (PR) training if by the far the best way to train a dog, no matter what his / her problems are. Through positive reinforcement / clicker training you can help your dog overcome issues such as resource guarding (where a dog guards items from other dogs, humans or both. Items can be high value such as bones or balls, or seemingly unimportant things such as tissues and socks), aggression to other dogs or people, phobias (such as walking on slippery floors) or dogs that are obsessed with something you don't want to be!

Clicker training refers to training using a clicker. A clicker is a training device that's used as a 'marker', that is to mark when your dog has done something right...the same as when you say "good boy," only a clicker is much more useful because the dogs' brain processes and understands the meaning of the clicker faster than verbal praise, and the clicker sounds the same every time, which the human voice (or voices if the dog is praised by people other than yourself) doesn't...I'm probably not explaining this very well because I'm not a dog behaviourist or respectable trainer, but I'll include links and books in this post so you can do extra research. Consider this the very basic of introductions

Positive reinforcement training is basically where you positively reinforce (ie. do something the dog likes such as give him a treat or take him away from something that scares him) for doing the behaviour you want him to do. Say you want your dog to be calm, so you wait until he is calm and capture the behaviour by rewarding him. You do this every time and the dog is going to learn that being calm and lying down earns him nice things, so he will want to do this more, and you will soon have a nice calm dog lying around the house! Of course it's not that simple but you get the idea

So how does clicker training tie into PR? Well, clicker training IS PR! Essentially you wait until the dog does what you want (let's go very basic and say he sits), you click the clicker the instant he sits, and then he gets a treat. Thus, click of clicker = treats = dog will be more willing to do the behaviour more often. Every time you click the clicker the dog must be rewarded within a few seconds; for harder tricks use nicer, higher value treats!

Remeber, you don't use the clicker all the time. Once your dog 100% knows the trick (eg. "sit!" ) and he 100% understands the command, fade out the clicker. When the dog is doing the trick over and over reliably, you don't have to click after he does the trick. The clicker is only used to help your dog understand when learning the trick. You can and should still use food / toys as reward, but you can fade out to using these irregularly...for example ask for a "sit", "paw", "lie down" before giving the dog a treat...asking for a chain of tricks before rewarding him will keep your dog interested and on his toes, but remember! Don't ask him to do too many before rewarding, otherwise he won't think training is worth it, and give him treats after one command sometimes!

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Do I need to charge the clicker?
Some people believe you need to 'charge' the clicker to help the dog understand what it's for. That is you click, give your dog a treat; click, give your dog a treat and so on. However some studies say that you don't need to charge the clicker at all (you don't charge saying "good boy" to a dog, do you?), so it's really up to you. We didn't charge the clicker with Kasper, but that's because he had supposedly used one before.



What can the clicker be used to teach?
Anything! Here are some examples of what I have clicker trained Kasper; to bring me a tissue when I say 'atishoo', to spin in a circle, to weave through my legs, to crawl, to play dead, to stand on his hind legs, to "disappear" (run up the stairs and out of sight)...those are just some of the tricks we have learnt together, the possibilities are endless!

On a more serious note, PR has helped Kasper overcome fear of strangers (I'm talking growling and barking fear; we had the man in question sit down, avoid looking in Kasper's eyes and throw kibble to Kasper. Within forty minutes Kasper was best friend with the man and they were playing tuggy together!), resource guarding (Kasper used to RG bones, so every time we went near him whilst he had a bone we dropped treats next to him. Over a period of months we moved on to stroking him, and he will now gladly swap a prized item for a treat) and Kasper also goes and fetches the mail from the door, and will bring it to us wherever we are in the house

We also used PR training when we first got our budgies. Kasper is 1/2 Springer Spaniel, the other 1/2 Border Collie, so he has *high* prey drive! Anything that moves and he's there, watching and willing to chase after it! So when we first got the budgies, although we already had a lot of pets, he was very interested in them because they were noisy and flew. He would pace the table and jump up at them, whining and yelping. So we threw treats at him, whenever he was interested in the birds. This is called the Look At That game (LAT) which is used when a dog is fearful or highly excitable over something. Eventually the birds = good things, and he was looking at the birds then looking to us for a treat. After this we began feeding him treats when he was calm, especially when the birds were being noisy and he was still calm. It took him two days to be completely fine with the birds and ignore them

Not only is PR good for the dog, but it's good for the owner too! It's so much fun!! And, because there are no punishments or corrections, training is fun and interesting for the dog. You end up with a dog that isn't afraid of you, a dog that *wants* to obey you because it means good things will happen for him



I'm rubbish at clicking, I can't get the timing right and my dog's getting confused!
That's okay, you just need a little practise! Ask a (human!) friend to help you out. Have them walk slowly, and try click every time their right foot hits the floor. If it's too hard, ask them to slow up. Once you're clicking bang on when the person's foot hits the floor, ask them to speed up. Then try clicking for both feet. Once you've got that ask them to do some 'commands' (sit, jump, roll over, whatever!) and click the instant they are doing it right!



My dog isn't doing the trick at all, he's too busy chasing our cat / trying to get my brother to play with him!

Okay, when you are beginning training you need to start off in an environment with as few distractions as possible! So a room empty of people and other pets. Then you need to use something awesome as a reward, something that will keep your dog interested. This differs from dog to dog; if your dog loves fetch, use that, if he goes crazy for tuggy, play tuggy, if he adores food, use cooked meat or cheese...you get the idea

As he gets better and better with no distractions, slowly add a few in. Ask a family member to sit in the room but don't do anything, move outside etc. If your dog becomes distracted, back up a few steps until you have his whole attention again.



How can I start PR / Clicker training?

Kikopup's videos on Youtube are a must see. She has a lot of videos ranging from the very basic to the more advanced, and they are well worth a watch. Here is an introductory one to clicker training:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wv1uvvqaSw (ah I can't get the forum to embed the video, never mind just copy and paste the url!)

And some good books:

Don't Shoot the Dog

Train Your Dog Like a Pro

The Power of Positive Dog Training

Puppy Primer (this is a mostly good book, but some things need to be taken with a pinch of salt - you CAN play tug of war with your dog!)

I'll probably add to this later, I'm a bit zapped of brain power right now! Also, feel free to add to this...I'm sure there are lots of dog owners and trainers out there who know more about this than I do

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