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Clicker The Clicker is a magical device, used to teach animals hundreds of tricks. Not only does it work for dogs, but it is widely in use for dolphins, horses and cats. At least one gold fish has been trained with the Clicker Method. The Clicker is a little box you can press on and then it goes "click-clack". You may ask, "what's so magical about that?" It's not the box itself, but the person behind it that makes it magical. |
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Snap your fingers ten times and give your dog a treat immediately after each snap. Now wait a while and snap once more when your dog isn't looking. I bet it will turn around and ask for its treat. This means the dog is conditioned; it knows, after every snap it gets a treat.
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To use the Clicker Method, your dog must be conditioned to some sound, like we did with the snapping. This can be anything, as long as it always sounds the same and is not used in any other situation. The Clickers you can buy are practical, since they can be heard from far away and are easy to use. By the way, there are also animal-shaped Clickers.
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When your dog is reliably conditioned, meaning it asks for its treat every time you make the sound you have chosen, you're ready for the first trick. It is good to teach the dog something completely useless at first. Like that it is much easier to make a game out of the training. Later you can go over to the basics or to whatever you like.
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An easy trick I taught Gina is to touch her nose with her paw on cue. For this I first stuck a piece of scotch tape on her nose. Of course she wanted to get it off again, so she rubbed her nose with her paw. As soon as she touched her nose, I clicked and gave her a treat. She rubbed her nose again and I clicked and treated her again. We did this about twenty times, always keeping the tape on her nose. The next day we repeated the whole thing. I didn't think about the trick any longer and I was surprised when I saw her do it, because she wanted something I was eating. We practiced right there and then, and we also started working on the cue. As she was rubbing her nose again and again, I said <scratch>, the cue, every time right before she lifted her paw to rub her nose. We practiced again the next day, first with tape, then without. During the last longer training session she only got a treat if she rubbed her nose after I had said <scratch>. Now we repeat the trick every now and then. Hardly any dog forgets a trick it has learned with Clicker Training. |
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If you try the nose rubbing trick with your dog, don't expect it to learn the trick as fast as Gina did. Most people have to practice clicking at the right moment first. Make up your own tricks and post them on the Message Board !
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Especially grown-ups worry about how to stop the clicking and treat giving. Here is the trick: when the dog knows its lesson well, you start to click and treat it every second time for a while. You can then go on to every third, fourth , fifth, etc. It's important that you click and treat your dog randomly, maybe two times in a row, skipping five times, skipping two times, etc. Be unpredictable, it's more exciting for the dog. But you must treat your dog after every click, or it will soon loose interest.
These are the basics of Clicker Training. You don't need to know
more to teach your dog a few tricks, but if you want a movie star quality dog, I suggest you read one of the books on the topic. Have fun clicking!
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