Imagine
you are having a bummer day at work. You’re tired, don’t really want to be
there right now, and frankly, you aren’t in love with the project you’re
working on. You’re irritable, don’t want to talk to anyone, and just want to
get through the day. Then you get called into the boss’ office, where you find
out that due to the fantastic work you did you are getting a $1,000 bonus.
Would you perk up? Would you walk back to your desk with the world looking a
little brighter and that project seeming a little more interesting? Would you
resolve to keep working hard on that project just in case you’d get another
bonus?
 |
| A $1,000 you say? That would buy a lot of noms! |
We
have the power to shift our dog’s mood just as dramatically, and all it takes
is a little *click.* We can take a dog who is experiencing mild
anxiety, concern, anger, boredom, or feeling a general malaise, and with a *click*
their brain releases feel-good hormones that boost their mood and make them
want to earn more of those little *clicks.* How do we do this?
Clicker
Training
Clicker
training is an animal training method that uses a reward marker to target a
behavior and then rewards that behavior.
Clicker
training is based on behavioral psychology and learning theory, and came to the
dog world from the marine biology world, where it first began. In marine
biology its extremely hard to use force and corrections to get a sea lion or
Orca to do what you want, so trainers had to find ways of making the animals
want to do the tricks that pleased the crowd as well as the behaviors that made
it possible to take care of them – such as opening their mouths for dental
exams and standing still for blood draws.
 | |
| Just try getting a Sea Lion to do something it doesn't really want to do.... |
Clicker
training started migrating into the dog world about 25 years ago and now it is
a dominant training method that integrates well with other training methods. We
use clicker training when doing canine sports such as agility, flyball, and
Trieball. We use it for working with reactive dogs doing Behavioral Adjustment
Training or following the Control Unleashed protocols. We use it to teach dogs
how to be hearing dogs, seeing-eye dogs, mobility dogs, and psychiatric
assistance dogs. We use it to teach basic obedience such as sit, down, and
stay. Clicker training is easy to learn and dogs learn so fast with it that
truly there isn’t any reason not to make your dog a clicker dog.
 |
| Maya doing flyball - one of the many sports that can be clicker-trained. |
How
do you start?
The
beauty is in the simplicity of it. It doesn’t involve a lot of training,
although as with most things the more you train and the more you learn the
better you get. It doesn’t require your dog to be brilliant, young, or a
certain breed. They don’t even have to be able to see or hear! And best all,
there are only a couple rules to ensure we are training effectively –
1.
Each
time you click, you reward. Even if you click accidentally, you still
give the dog a treat. It isn’t our dogs fault we mashed the button when they
were barking or peeing on the neighbor’s prized tulips, we made the sound and
therefore we have to fill our promise of giving the treat. Don’t worry though –
we all make clicks when we don’t mean it. It all evens out eventually!
2.
We
click one per behavior. Even if our dog did the most amazing behavior you have
ever seen, you click once. There is no value to frenetically clicking 20 times
– click once, and reward immediately.
3.
Each
click is a “snapshot” of the behavior. Keep this in mind when planning your
timing. If I am rewarding a dog for lifting his paw, I need to click while his
paw is lifted. If I click before, I am marking his feet on the ground. If I
mark afterwards, I am marking his foot on the ground. So imagine your clicker
is a camera, and you are going for the perfect shot – just when that paw is
lifting into the air you press the clicker to capture the desired behavior.
 | ||||||||
| Fortunately it takes much less skill to clicker train than it does to produce photographs this good. (Nichole Hamilton and her clicker trained Staffordshire Bull Terriers/http://www.niroha.com/). |
To
get started you need to have a clicker, some small tasty treats, and ideally a
hungry dog. Some dogs are still happy to work for food after a big meal, but
generally you get your best success if your dog is a little hungry and
motivated to work for food. When it comes to clickers there are two very common
types – the box clicker and the I-Click. My personal preference is for the
I-Click because in my experience the box clicker can be very aversive for dogs
due to the sharp, loud nature of the click. Some dogs don’t like the sound of
the I-Click either, so another marker can be substituted like a verbal marker,
a pen click, a flashlight blink, a touch on their body in a specific place, or
a whistle (which is what marine animal trainers use.) The important thing is that you can generate
the marker immediately, on the order of milliseconds. You want the marker to be
as synchronous with the behavior as possible without ending up marking the
behavior before the animal even does it!
 | |
| I-Click |
Start
by loading your clicker by clicking and immediately treating your dog for 20-30
times. Remember to click first, then treat! Otherwise the click becomes a
meaningless noise if it comes after the food. Once you notice your dog anticipating the treat
after the clicker, you can move to using the clicker to mark behaviors.
What
am I marking?
 | |
| Box Clicker |
Clicker
training is best described as “very simple to do, very hard to get perfect.”
Once you have decided what behavior you want to work on, you need to decide
your criteria. If I’m
rewarding my dog for looking at me, I need to decide if I want a glance, if I
want a 2-second stare, if I want the dog to turn his body towards me. I also need to decide what is
reasonable. If a dog has never learned to spin, I won’t start out waiting for
them to spin. I’m going to start out with rewarding a head turn, then for a
deeper head turn, then a shoulder tilt, then a step into the spin, and so on
until my dog is completing the spin. We should have a good idea of what
behavior we are after, but our dogs have to guess, so keep your criteria
reasonable based on your dog’s current skill!! You also should decide how
many trials you am
going to do, or how long you
are going to train for that session. For most training sessions shorter
is better, even on the order of 30 – 90 seconds. Dogs learn quickly and can
become bored quickly, and we want them to remain interested in the training.
After
your session is done, stop and think back how it went. Identify what went well
(“she looked at me 14 times!”) and what didn’t (“she looked at the squirrel outside 20
times!”) and decide any changes you want to make before the next session. Are
you achieving an 80% success rate with the behavior? If you are, then you can increase the criteria. Are you
achieving below 80% success
rate, then you can either keep the same criteria, or if you are getting an extremely low success rate you need to lower you critiera.
How can you make your next
session better so you can get more clicks and rewards in the same time? Is there
anything you can do to increase her chance to succeed? This may mean
moving your training to a new area (like inside your house when no one else is
home and distractions are minimal), using better treats (the smellier and
squishier the better), having a hungrier dog (I don’t understand….she just ate
dinner, but doesn’t she want dessert??), or even
identifying triggers that may make it hard for your dog to concentrate such as
cars, strangers, wild life, unexpected noises, sunbeams playing shadows on the
floor, or even being in an unfamiliar place.
So
that thing about making a dog happy…
One
of my favorite things about clicker training is how it impacts the brain and
learning. Dogs come to love clicker training because it is fun, they get
frequent rewards, and they get to spend time with their people. The entire
clicker training session becomes enjoyable and dogs desire to keep training and
continue earning their treats. This creates an association with the click that
goes deeper than “click = food.” Yes, that association is there, but attached
to it is also all the joy, relaxation, and anticipation of food that the dog
feels during the training. We can use that to our advantage when training our
dogs and use the click as a way to shift their mindset. For instance, if a dog
is experiencing mild anxiety or concern, we can either ask them for a clickable
behavior (look at me, sit, spin, etc) or we can wait for them to give us a
clickable behavior (looking at you without being cued, sniffing the ground,
shaking as they just got out of water, taking a deep breath) and click. That
can shift the dog out of its state of mind and into a mindset of clicker
training, including all the positive associations that go along.
Here
is the most amazing thing – the same thing happens when we teach the cues. If
we practice a certain behavior many times, the dog learns that the behavior
itself means a treat is coming. They also learn that the cue itself means a
treat is coming as soon as they do the behavior. Compare it to Pavlov’s dogs.
He rang the bell, and they started to salivate in anticipation of their dinner.
The ringing of the bell is a cue that food is coming. Now, Pavlov’s dogs didn’t
have to do a behavior, but that is incidental. The important thing is that the
dogs learn that these cues mean something positive is coming and that will
bring up all the associations you have built with the cue. The cue itself
becomes reinforcing.
 |
| Hearing the car door slam is a cue that foster parents are home! |
This
goes both ways of course. If each time you pick up the car keys you leave the
dog by herself for 10 hours, then the dog will quickly learn to associate the
cue (picking up your keys) with being gone for 10 hours. If the dog hates being
left alone then that can cause the dog to develop strong negative reactions to the
keys being picked up because the dog is anticipating the distress of being
alone that will follow. If we instead take a dog for a car ride each time we
pick up the keys (and the dog enjoys car rides) then we create a positive
association of keys = fun things.
Why
mention all this? What is Lucia up to?
 | |
| FINALLY I'm getting some face time! |
Clicker
training is amazing for all dogs, but it really does wonders for shy, anxious, or insecure dogs. Lucia is
all three of these! A lot of what I do with her is clicker training. I am
clicker training her to become used to wearing a muzzle. I am clicker training
her to walk nicely on leash. I am clicker training her for making positive
choices around the dogs (like turning away when she feels uncomfortable.) Lucia
is a very clicker-savy dog (ie, she is very familiar with clicker training) and
so this is a tool I can use not only to mark her positive behaviors but also to
adjust her state of mind.
Monday
through Friday I take the dogs out for lunch time walks. Lucia gets walked by
herself, and we work on multiple things while we walk. The great thing about
clicker training is that I don’t have to mark only one behavior – I can mark
and reward whatever I like! One of the primary things we are working on is
loose-leash walking. I reward her for walking by my side, as well as for making
the choice to glance at strangers as they walk by, for going up and sniffing a
strangers hand, for checking out a novel object.
Sometimes
we encounter a situation that makes Lucia nervous, such as a person running by.
In that case I can stand there and just let her work through it, and sometimes
I do if I feel that she will become comfortable with it if allowed to information
gather for long enough via looking and sniffing at the stimulus. However, if I
think she is getting close to threshold, or that I need to distract her and
change her focus so she can calm down, I can use clicker training. And here
again, I have a couple choices – I can prompt her for a behavior (I like to use
“touch” and “spin”) or I can wait for her to offer me a behavior like sniffing
the ground, turning away, or even shifting her body weight to a more balanced,
relaxed position. Either way, once I click her behavior I encourage her to
shift to a different state of mind – a state of mind where she is happy,
earning treats, and motivated to do more behaviors that will earn her treats.
In this method I gain further control over her environment and this allows us
to make sure her experiences remain educational and positive so that she can
become more and more comfortable out in the world.
By the way....
Clicker training isn't just for marine mammals and dogs! Cats can do it to! Here are some wonderful, short videos of Autumn Skan and her very talented cat, Saber!
See more of Saber at http://www.facebook.com/autumn.skan
Where
can I learn more?
There
are countless wonderful resources for clicker training, only a small sample is
listed below!
Clicker
Training for Dogs – Karen Pryor
Power
of Positive Dog Training – Pat Miller
Don’t
Shoot the Dog – Karen Pryor
Family
Friendly Dog Training – Patricia McConnell
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