*This article is intended as a supplement to a verbal lecture.
Lisa Giroux, Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada lisa@k9station.com
A clicker-trained skill...Belgian Malinois flying over the A-frame to get to the target at the base.
A Dog That is Ready to Clicker Train
Before you can begin clicker training, your dog must be food motivated. Most dogs already are, but some dogs that are free-fed "buffet style" (the food is left on the floor for the dog to finish when he pleases) will not be motivated enough to be able to be clicker trained. Please see my article Feeding Routines for more information.
Click Means Treat: Charging Up the Clicker
This is the first thing you have to do before you can do anything at all with the clicker. You must teach the dog that the click means something. The click should mean to the dog, "a treat is forthcoming." The following instructions should be followed for approximately ONE WHOLE WEEK. Do not skimp on this time frame as it is designed to get your dog a very strong association with the click. You should aim for about 1,000 click/treat repetitions before moving on to teaching your dog to actually work for the click.
Begin the following exercises with a HUNGRY DOG. Consider measuring out his food ration and using at least one meal per day to "charge up" the clicker. Do several sessions per day with each session being no longer than about TWO MINUTES.
Click the clicker and give a treat. Do this approximately 30 times per minute for the first few days. This means you will be clicking and treating almost as fast as you can move your fingers to click and get the treat to the dog! Remember that sessions should remain quite short! Use different rooms of your house, different body postures, and (VERY IMPORTANT) don't ask the dog to do anything like "sit" or "gentle." Just click and treat!
You will notice the dog "startling" to the click. This means he is beginning to understand what the clicker means. DON'TS: Do not under any circumstances use the click at this point to get the dog to come to you, or "just to see" his cute expression when he cocks his head and comes running. Never click the clicker without giving a treat afterwards. If necessary hide the clicker so that your spouse or children do not get tempted to "play" with the dog with it! Do not allow curious onlookers to click the clicker "just for fun."
After you see the dog beginning to startle to the click, start moving the charge-up sessions to more difficult places such as your backyard or at a bench on your street walks. Continue doing short, fast sessions of "click-treat-click-treat-click-treat" in these new areas for a couple of days.
After you have done lots of fast click-treating, begin randomly letting some time lapse between the click and the treat. Click, one-mississippi-two-mississippi-three-mississippi Treat.
Begin really randomizing the time between the click and the treat...most of the time it's still immediate, sometimes it's a little longer, sometimes it's a little longer still. Build up to the point where you can have treats in a bowl across the room, click the dog, walk to the bowl, get him a treat, etc. Remember that you shouldn't be doing this EVERY CLICK, just randomly.
After you've done approximately 1,000 total click/treat repetitions over the course of approximately a week's time in different areas and with different time lapse between click and treat, you are ready to use the clicker to teach your dog things!
Offering Behaviours: Working For the Click
Many websites and books will tell you that at this point, you should click your dog for doing already known behaviours. It has been my experience that this does NOT teach the dog to offer behaviours and work for the click.
Pick an area with hardly any distractions (people, other dogs, noises, toys, etc). Make sure you have a room where you can shut the door or prevent the dog from wandering away from you. Get a margerine lid or a cut-up piece of a mousepad (a target item), your clicker, your treats, and your dog.
BE READY with your clicker and your treats. Do not show the dog the target and PREVENT the dog from sniffing the item. We want to use the dog's first exposure to the item, so that we can click it. Dogs are naturally curious and will quite naturally sniff/check out something dropped on the floor, but afterwards might find it boring to go back to it. USE that first exposure to click the dog.
Drop the target on the floor, as unobtrusively as possible, about 3-5 feet from where you are located (within almost touching distance of where you are standing or sitting). Do not point to it or tell the dog to "go see" it. When the dog checks it out, CLICK and TREAT.
At this point your dog will begin to try to do things that have, in the past, resulted in him getting a treat. He will hang around by you. He will sit and look at you expectantly. He might paw you, whine, bark in your face, lie down, roll over, play dead, or anything else that you may have taught him. He might try to go for the treats in the bowl or pocket! ALL OF THIS IS NORMAL. Do not be tempted to "help" him by showing him the target etc. You must ignore everything he is doing. Do not stare him in the eye as this might freeze him up. Cross your arms, look away, sigh, cross your legs, look up at the ceiling, look at your watch, fiddle with your hair, etc. This type of stuff is the ONLY clue you can give your dog that he's not getting anywhere with his behaviour! Sooner or later, he will shrug his doggie shoulders and give up, and then will probably begin sniffing around the room and will probably accidentally hit that target!! CLICK, use your voice GOOD BOY, and five or six big ole yummy treats!
Your dog will now probably try the same old stuff he tried in #4. Ignore. Wait. Now that he's gotten such a big reaction and such lovely treats he may try longer. WAIT. Remember not to stare right into his eyes. Even if the dog lies down and appears to have "quit," WAIT. Get up and sit back down again, see if that gets him up. Just don't give him any commands. Sooner or later he will hit that target again.
Repeat until dog "gets it." Most dogs need 4-6 clicks and then they start getting this funny look on their face and walk slowly over and look at you and look at the target. After that, they usually start running back and forth to the target. Once you see that they understand, stop the session with a big reward. End on a good note, always!
Practice having the dog target in short training sessions in different rooms and with the target in different spots. Make the target further away from you, up on a chair, hold it in your hand, put it under the coffee table, etc. Make sure you don't work for more than about 2-5 minutes as this is hard mental work for the dog.
Naming the Behaviour
After the dog is reliably doing the behaviour in a few different situations, begin saying a command word just as the dog is about to touch the target. Literally 1/2 a second before you would click the actual behaviour, say a command word. This means that you have to wait for the dog to really and truly committ to the behaviour before saying anything. Soon your dog will learn to associate the behaviour with the command word.
Click for every time the dog does the behaviour at first. Gradually, just use your voice to mark the behaviour and then reward with a treat. Slowly begin randomizing your rewards to make the behaviour stay strong.
A Step Further! Shaping
So now you've taught your dog to touch a target, probably with his nose or paw. Now you will begin learning how to shape behaviours.
Think about dolphin shows. How in the world did the dolphin trainers get the dolphins to do back-flips? They couldn't just sit around and wait for back-flips like we sat around and waited for the dog to touch the target...they might get old and gray before a back-flip accidentally happened. The answer is shaping.
The dolphin trainer sits by the edge of the pool waiting for the dolphin to stick its nose out of the water. Click (actually with dolphins it's a whistle) FISH. The dolphin then does the same things our dog did above...tries everything...and finally sticks its nose out of the water again. Whistle FISH. Repeat repeat repeat until the dolphin is sticking its nose out of the water again and again and again for the whistle. Now, the dolphin is expecting a certain result.
Now, the trainer makes a decision to try to get an extinction burst. An extinction burst is what happens when an expected result does not occur. (Picture what happens when you put money into a vending machine and choose an item. Expected result: item falls down after you push the button. Nothing falls. Do you push the button again, pound the machine, rock the machine, stick your hand into the machine? Those are all part of an "extinction burst." They happen just before you decide to quit trying). In this case, the dolphin EXPECTS to get a whistle when it sticks its nose out of the water. That's what has happened over and over, multiple times. So, the dolphin sticks its nose out of the water and the trainer....DOESN'T WHISTLE. The dolphin then, out of frustration, tries again. Nothing. The dolphin tries again, but this time SURGES out of the water, and its whole head comes out instead of just its nose. WHISTLE FISH. The trainer now begins whistling/fishing only the "head out" attempts. The trainer is now one step closer to that back flip! She will continue to mark and reward the "head out" until it is really reliable, then will withhold the whistle again to try to get "body out." And so on and so forth until the trainer has shaped the behaviour of "back-flip on command."
A great way to practice shaping is to try the exercise called "101 Things to Do with a Box" by Karen Pryor, dog book author and former dolphin trainer. Do this just to get into the practice of shaping, then have fun dreaming up all the neat stuff you can teach your dog!
Some neat tricks I have seen:
Check to see if you are a boy or a girl
Fetch a beer from the fridge
Get your tail
Where's your nose?
Limp
Bow
Lick your lips
Sneeze
Cross your legs
Do a karate kick (back leg!!!!)
Helpful Links
Rewards, Lures, and Bribes by Suzanne Clothier