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Clicker Training Your Dog With Four Easy Steps

Clicker training is among the most fulfilling and quickest systems for teaching your pet. Considering that clicker training employs positive reinforcement, your dog, puppy or pet will swiftly understand the behavior you are instructing. Here are a handful of points you need to comprehend about clicker training.

Clicker training consist of a few basics including positive reinforcement, clicker conditioning, known as charging the clicker, good timing and marking and repeating. It’s by way of these methods that you could rapidly start training your puppy with a clicker with excellent success.

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 teaching your dog or puppy the sound of clicker and that a reward will be given at the sound of the click. The first few training sessions may require you to charge the clicker, but after the third or fourth session it may not be necessory. To charge the clicker you simply click the clicker and then give a treat to the dog. Do this 10-15 times until the clicking sounds triggers your dog to look for the treat. Once the dog understands that the sound of the clicker “marks” when they will receive a treat the training can begin.

Proper timing is critical with clicker training. In order to tie in positive reinforcement with the clicker, we need to time the click, or “mark” the behavior. For instance, when teaching the “sit” command we will click the moment the dog is sitting. This means the second their rear end touch the ground, you click. This “marks” the behavior and you would then immediately treat. If you click a second or two later the dog may not know what they did. If you treat and then click, you are reinforcing the wrong behavior. So, timing is everything. Again, in this instance, we are allowing the dog to sit on their own, then we are marking the behavior with a click and then 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 grasp these 4 main ideas of clicker training it is easier to start to show other types of behaviors . More complicated behaviors could be bundled together and the use of target training can be introduced to permit your puppy to concentrate on certain items or positioning to develop a behavior. These four concepts in addition to 4 secrets that every owner should know can be located at the http://ClickerTrainingSystem.com website.

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.

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