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Things people often ask about or seem to be
confused about alot
Don't click without treating.
Every time you click you should give the animal
a treat.
Treats
don't have to be food. Most
of the time Snowflake would rather play fetch that eat.
For him a great treat is me throwing his toy so he can
retreive it.
When you click, the animal will probably stop
what it's doing. Don't click to keep the animal
doing something. For instance, I'm teaching my dog to
heel. I click him for being in heel position, then he
doesn't have to heel anymore. He gets his treat, then we
try heeling again. Once he learns to stay in heel
position consistantly while we are walking, I start
increasing the time he must stay in heel position to be
clicked. A few times for 2 seconds, then try for four
seconds, and so on.
You need to click exactly
when the behavior is happening. When teaching a
dog to heel, you should click when the dog is in the
correct position, not after he has already passed by you.
Pretend the clicker is a camera, and you are taking a
picture of the behavior you want to increase.
The clicker isn't magic. All the clicker
does is give information to the animal. It tells the
animal that at the moment it hears the click, it is doing
something right and is going to get a treat. Some people
use positive reinforcement alone to train, but a clicker
helps the animal learn much faster because it knows
exactly what it is doing correctly.
How to do it
First, you may want to read Karen Pryors book "Don't Shoot
the Dog", and/or her FAQ. It
gives a lot of easy to understand explanations of how
clickers and operant conditioning work with all animals.
It's available in a lot of book stores in the psychology
section, her FAQ is here. (And
here
is Gary Wilkes' FAQ)
Now you need a clicker. You can order them from Karen Pryors' or Gary Wilkes'
web site, or to get started right away, you can use a
"pop-up" lid from a jar. I started using the
lid from a jar of Frutopia. Other people have recommended
baby food jar lids, but I couldn't get them to click
loudly and consistently.
You are now ready to begin training your animal. The
first thing you need to train is that a click will be
followed by a good
thing. Both of my dogs really like food treats (pieces
of cheese, broken up dog biscuts, cut up hot dogs).Use
the smallest pieces of treat possible so you can
reinforce your animal many times. If your animal likes
food treats, this is probably the easiest way to provide
the good thing after the click. If your animal isn't very
food motivated, that's OK. Anything your animal likes can
be used as the good thing. When Snowflake wants to go out,
I make him sit in front of the door before I open it. His
good thing for sitting is to get to go out. Other things
you can use are toys, petting, praise, or play time.
Anything your animal enjoys.
Now take your clicker, click it and give the animal its
treat. Click again, give the treat again. Do this several
times until you see the animal is expecting the treat
after it hears the click.
Now that your animal has been conditioned to the click,
teach it a trick. Something any animal can probably do is
spin around. Get comfortable (maybe sitting on the couch)
with your clicker and some treats and your animal near by.
Don't give any kind of verbal cue. Just let the animal do
whatever it wants to do. Alot of the time when you're
clicker training you want to let the animal figure out
what to do on it's own. The way to do this is to break
down what you want into many tiny little steps. For a
spin, the first little step might be for the animal to
turn its head in the direction of the spin. When it turns
its head, you should click the clicker and give the treat.
Now, don't do anything. Just wait for the animal to turn
it's head again. Then click again and give the treat.
After a few repetitions of this, your animal should be
turning its head, knowing that it will get a click and
treat for doing it.
You now need to start clicking the behaviors that are
closer to the second tiny little step. Maybe the second
step of learning to spin would be for the animal to shift
its body weight to the inside of the circle it will be
spinning. Only click when your animal turns its head and
shifts its body weight. It is very important that you are
clicking most of the behaviors that your animal is
offering. You need to be sure not to move faster than
your animal can learn in order to keep the training fun
for the animal.
Keep slowly raising what the animal has
to do for the click and treat. Remember to click and
treat the best 75% or so of the behaviors closest to what
you are looking for, and say "wrong" in a
neutral voice for the 25% or so of the behaviors that
aren't as close
After your animal is doing a spin that you like, you can
add a cue. The cue can be anything you want, a word, or a
hand signal, or whatever. I'll use the word twirl. You
should be very sure the animal is consistantly doing the
behavior you're putting on cue just like you want it to.
Just before the animal starts to spin, I'll say twirl.
The animal was going to spin anyway, but after a few
times it will start to associate the word with the action.
Once you have the behavior on cue, you need to start
clicking and treating on a variable schedule of
reinforcement (VSR). Start making the animal spin twice
to get a click and treat, then spin once, then mix it up
for a while; 2 - 1 - 1 - 2 - 1- 2- 2- 1 - 2- 1 - 1 - 2 or
something similar. Just be random. After the animal is
doing well with 2 repetitions, start working in 3, 4, and
so on.
