What is clicker training?
There is one sort of training method that we have rarely mentioned on the Practice Paws website, not to mention, it’s a big one in the dog training world. Yup, clicker training. But what is it? Well clicker training is basically an approach to positive reinforcement. And it all revolves around the dog training clicker. This small device in your hand is basically a form of communication to your dog, and if you were to think of one word that can summarise the meaning of this click being sent to them, it would be ‘good’.
If you really wanted to explain it in a strange way, you could say ‘Clicker training is a way of rewarding your dog through sound’. And well yes, you can think of it that way. They hear the click and interpret it as praise: ‘I have done something good’.
Your dog training clicker can be a life saver (you know – helpful), it is this small device, easy to carry around and super useful for those that are not great at rewarding with treats that fast. But we will come to that soon.
How does a clicker work?
Now this is the easiest part for us to explain. Basically, the device is in an oval shape (most commonly) and has a ‘button like’ part on it, when you press it (down), it makes a ‘clicking’ sound.
Simple.
But that’s just the use of it. How does it work in the aspect of applying it to your dog training? Well throughout the session, you would be holding the clicker for practically the whole time in your hand. When your dog does something good, you click and then give them a treat. The click is basically an instant ‘yes I did something good, and a reward will be coming soon’. It makes sure your dog knows what the good thing (what you clicked) was and then actually get rewarded for it to fully reinforce the command.
So, the ‘click’ is a fast and accurate way of you saying ‘good’ and then implying that they will get rewarded with a treat for that soon.
How can you use the clicker and introduce it to your dog?
Before you use it in any of your actual training sessions, you want to introduce this mysterious device to your dog. Keep in mind, until you teach them, they don’t know what a click means yet.
What you want to do is just have a very (very) short session with your dog. All you’re going to do is have the clicker in one hand and treats ready to go in the other. Make a click (don’t ask your dog to do anything, just click it) and then reward them straight away.
Now you want to start repeating this a couple of times: click, treat, click, treat, click, treat, click, treat, click, treat.
By now, your dog should know ‘click = treat’. And they will expect when you click the clicker, they are going to get a treat. Because they also know ‘treat = I was good’ they now know ‘click = I was good = treat’. So basically:
Click = treat
Treat = good
Click = good = treat
And you’re now ready to put this into your training session.
Why is clicker training helpful?
So now you are most likely wondering ‘how would this be actually helpful to me?’. Well, this type of training can help many people in different ways.
For example, let’s start with a big one. There are many people who use treats for their reward-based training but also a lot of people who use toys (like a 10 second game of fetch). But that’s where the problem starts to arise.
If you ask them to sit, and they sit, but to reward them you let them fetch, do you really know what they think you are rewarding? For example, they could take this as you are rewarding them for standing up. Why? Because you asked them to sit, then to reward them, you threw something to fetch, causing them to stand up and then chase it. In that sentence, the ‘stand up’ part is where your problem is found.
So, we are not saying there is anything wrong with toy-based training, but it can lead to a few troubles in some commands. Instead, we would recommend as your dog sits, you click, then do a fetch.
Now what does this imply? Well, you are clicking we then sit, NOT when they stand up so they know the exact moment they were good: when they sat. This way they know that they are still going to be rewarded with some play but know the exact moment they were good.
Another way clicker training can be helpful is if you are a bit slower to reward (talking treat based). It might take you a while to get a treat which results in your dog getting rewarded for the wrong command. Even though treat pouches can be a huge help to this, you may just not be able to get the treat fast enough. And this is where the clicker comes in handy.
With the clicker (like we said in the last example), you can reward your dog for doing the right thing at the exactly right time and THEN take a bit of time to get your treat to them. This ensures you are rewarding the right behaviour and your dog is learning the right thing.
So basically, clicker training is helpful in any situation where you need to be able to reward your dog immediately, but you can’t do that with treats or toys etc. You need to be able to tell them ‘Good’ at the exact moment and that a treat is coming.
Do we recommend clicker training?
And we’ve gotten to the big question! Do we recommend this method of training? And to cut it short: yeh. There is nothing bad about this method of training, as a business that highly encourages positive reinforcement, this is a great approach to your training. However, it is important to note that there are some circumstances where this just isn’t necessary and can just make your job harder.
If, for example, you are a dog owner who just wants to teach the basic obedience and you have no trouble handing treats to your dog quickly, then clicker training is necessary. If you do have troubles in training that we mentioned in the previous section of this post, then we would recommend using a clicker.
Here’s our list of situations where you might find a clicker useful:
- You are a bit slower to hand treats to your dog.
- You dog toy/ play based reward training.
- In agility training to let your dog know that they did the right thing as soon as they do it (because they might move on to the next obstacle before you can reward them) – however please note you cannot use this in actual agility competitions (or trials)
Which dog training clicker do we recommend?
Well, we can’t really say there’s only one clicker that we recommend because they are all good. However, if we were to recommend one brand that we have used in the past it would be the Karen Pryor clicker.