Training Tidbits

Pay attention to your dog when you're training him. If you want his attention, give him yours.

Be generous rewarding behavior you want.

Be quiet and don't react to behavior you don't want. Turn away or stand perfectly still.

When your dog offers something you want instead, reward it immediately.

At the second the behavior you want happens, mark it with a click and follow with the treat. Wait to reach for the treat until after you mark it.

Behavior that is reinforced will repeat. Behavior that is ignored will decrease and eventually stop.

Train in a quiet, boring place where you are the most interesting thing going.

Have fun training. Make it the high point of both of your days!

The Perfect Training Session is:

• Short. 5-10 minutes is enough. You can do 2-3 sessions per day at different times.
• Devoted to one exercise at a time. You can do more than one exercise in one session, but make a clear break between them.
• Active. Keep your dog concentrating on you and the exercise you're doing.
• Highly reinforcing. Lots of repetitions and lots of treats.
• FUN!

And most of all remember: Pay Per Click!

Delivering Food

Another important mechanical skill is the ability to deliver the food as quickly as possible after you click. In order to get the most value from the click/treat sequence you need to be able to deliver the treat immediately after the click while the dog is in the same position you clicked. The click tells the dog he did the right thing, the food presented in the correct position is an added reinforcement.

This is especially important if you have a quick dog. For example if you cue and click a sit and the dog jumps up before you deliver the food, the extra opportunity to reinforce the sit position is lost. And you run the risk of developing a chain – sit, click, jump up, food.

So try this exercise. Get a timer that will beep (so you don’t have to look at the time.) Put on your bait bag with your usual treats and set the timer for 15 seconds. See how many pieces of food you can deliver to a countertop in the 15 seconds. One at a time of course! No fair grabbing a handful.

When you’ve reached the point where the number is consistent and you can’t go any faster, pick a specific spot and deliver just to that spot. A good idea would be to change to something that is at the same height as your dog’s mouth.

When you’re proficient, up the criteria. Try the exercise with your eyes closed. Do it with your other hand.

This exercise will pay off when you can get that treat to appear from your bag to your dog in seconds.

Timing Exercises

As Bob Bailey has said so often “training is a mechanical skill.” Those words are so true and so powerful they inspire us to work on our mechanical skills so we can be more effective trainers. One of the most important mechanical skill you can develop as a clicker trainer is timing.

Developing your mechanical skills takes practice. And it must be good practice. The old saying “practice makes perfect” isn’t exactly accurate. Practice makes Permanent so be sure you’re careful about what you’re practicing!

Here are some exercises you can do to develop your timing. They are simple to allow you to make a quick judgment as to whether or not the criteria is met. Over time they will also develop a knee jerk type reaction in that you will respond automatically. They are best done if you can do them with a partner to observe you. But you’ll still get benefits if you do them alone especially if you can video or audio tape yourself. Just be very critical of your performance and make sure you don’t accept “close enough.”

1. Throw something hard into the air, like a set of keys that will make a noise when it hits the ground. Have your clicker in the other hand and click at the exact moment the object hits the ground. If you do it perfectly, there will be one sound. If you hear two sounds, keep practicing until there is only one.
2. Put the clicker on a table next to you. Hold the hard object out in front of you with your right hand and drop it. With the same hand, pick up the clicker and click at the same time the object hits. Again, you want one sound. Practice this with both hands until you are equally accurate with either hand. Once you get good at it, make it increasingly harder by lowering your hand closer to the ground before you drop the object. Work up slowly like you would when you train your dog. A little bit closer to the ground each time. You should be 95% accurate before you move on.
3. One of my favorite timing exercises can be done while watching TV. Pick a random thing like a person sitting down or a news anchor picking up a piece of paper. Every time it’s done, immediately click. If your dog happens to be nearby when you do this, it’s fun to feed him a treat every time you click. You strengthen the click/treat relationship in his mind and watch how attentive he gets as a result!

Have fun and remember, Pay Per Click!

Doggie Zen

To get the treat, you must give up the treat

I learned Doggie Zen from Shirley Chong, a wonderful trainer who has a number of exercises to help you develop impulse control in your dog.

Impulse control can be extremely useful not only in everyday life but in helping move your training forward. If you’ve had the experience of your dog offering or “throwing behaviors” without a cue, impulse control work can help. If you have a dog that is impatient during training, jumps up on people, is totally focused on the food or a beggar, you’ll find impulse control will help greatly. This exercise is a great start to develop this skill.

• Get out a treat that is good and smelly. Cheese works well for this, as does liver or Rollover-type stuff. Fix a few pieces that are small enough for you to cover in your closed hand.
• Let your dog see that you have a goodie in your hand, then close your hand over the goodie and let the dog sniff, lick, nibble, etc., trying to get the goodie. Eventually, the dog will give up. When the dog turns his head away from the goodie or steps back away from it, even if it's just a temporary thing, catch that moment by marking it with Yes! [or a click] and open your hand to give him the treat.
• It's important to leave your hand down at the dog's level, perfectly accessible to him. Let him have a good chance to try to get the treat out of your hand on his own. If the dog gets too enthusiastic and is actually hurting you, say OUCH!, glare at him and pull your hand up out of his reach for a few seconds.
• Give the dog as many trials in as many different places as you can.

Remember too, that this is silent training. Don't talk to your dog or try and get him to do the right thing. Let him figure it out on his own. It's great fun. Come back and post your experiences when you've tried it.

Observing Your Dog’s Behavior

One of the most valuable skills you can have as a clicker trainer is the ability to observe what your dog does. If you have strong observation skills, you will be able to capture what you want your dog to do much easier. The timing of the click is all important in conveying to your dog what it is you want them to repeat.

Another valuable skill is to be able to observe without judging the behavior. If you can remove making judgments from the training equation, it’s easier to shape behavior. And of course, judgments include those you make about yourself too. Nothing can hold a trainer back more than beating herself up for her inexperience or mistakes. We all make them and we all learn how to overcome them.

So here’s an excellent exercise to try in order to hone your observation without judgment skills.

Describe everything your dog does in 2 minutes and rate it wanted, unwanted, or neutral. Set a timer so you don’t have to watch a clock. You want to concentrate on your dog. Do this at a time when your dog is moderately active (you’ll get more to observe) and not focused on you. So don’t do it during a training session. You could pick a time when you are sitting reading or watching TV with your dog nearby.

Observe everything including sniffing, barking, lying down (how your dog does it, what position, etc.), looking at you or not, drinking, eating. Try to capture everything regardless of how small it is and write it down.This exercise will show you where you are, at this very minute, when it comes to observing your dog and also the variety of behaviors your dog exhibits. Put your list of what you observed in a safe place. Then in about a month do it again and compare your lists. It will be interesting to see if you observed more and what types of behavior your dog exhibits. Are there “default” behaviors?

If you’d like, post some of your results in a comment so we can see what kinds of things we are observing.

How to Be the Best Trainer You Can Be!

Learning how to be a master clicker trainer is as much of a process for you as your dog. The most important thing you can do to become better is to keep learning. Read books, articles, this blog and if at all possible, watch a master trainer at work.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you train:

1. Know what behavior you are looking for and click only that. Remember, what you click is what you get and what you get is what you click whether it’s what you really wanted or not! Watch what your dog is offering to see if you really are training the behavior you want or something else.

2. Control where you train. Teach a new behavior in a very quiet environment where you are the most interesting thing going. When it is solid, take it to many different places, gradually increasing the amount of distractions. Only when your dog can do the behavior correctly in many different places and under a lot of distraction does s/he truly “know” the behavior.

3. In the beginning, a new environment to the dog could just be a few steps away or turning around and looking the other way. Dogs don’t generalize so they need training in lots of different places for the behavior to be reliable.

4. Train small pieces of a complex behavior. Don’t move on until the small pieces are reliable. For example, a dog that cannot stay in one place with you at their side won’t be able to do it when you move away.

5. Establish and maintain a high rate of reinforcement. Once you get a correct behavior, get another one as soon as possible. This will help solidify the behavior.

6. Have a plan for your training session. Know what you are going to do, what you are looking for and what exactly you will click and treat.

7. Keep training sessions very short.

8. This is hands off the dog and keep your mouth shut training. Give the dog time to figure out what you want and be quick to click and treat it. Don’t talk and don’t give the cue more than once. Also don’t position your dog with your hands. They need to offer the behavior to really learn it.

9. Learn to analyze the results you’re getting. What did the dog do? What did I want the dog to do? Did I get what I wanted? Did I reinforce the right behavior?

10. Plan your next session as soon as you finish the one you are doing.

And most important of all, Have fun with the process!! There’s nothing more exciting than the communication you will develop with your dog.

101 Things To Do With A Box

A classic clicker training article, 101 Things To Do With A Box comes from Karen Pryor. If you are new to Clicker Training this is an excellent exercise for both you and your dog. If you are switching training styles, this exercise can help you both learn the basics.

It teaches the dog to try things on his own. He knows when he does the right thing because he will hear a click and get a treat. That will encourage him to try the same thing again. And it teaches you when to click based on your observations of your dog.

If you’re an old hand at Clicker Training, this exercise is a really fun refresher for both of you. You can download the full article from my website by clicking here.

After you've tried it, come back here and let's us know how it went. The results can be great fun.

Remember – when you train correctly you Pay per Click – even if you didn’t mean to click!

Our Story - Part One

Welcome to Pay Per Click for Dogs, dedicated to the two boys who inspired me to become a clicker trainer – the Misters Toby and Flaki.

Mister Toby (pictured here) and Mr. Flaki (pictured with me in my profile) came to me in January 1999, adopted from the SPCA and life has never been the same!

Soon after they arrived, it became clear that training was needed. Never having trained a dog before, Mr. Toby and I started a local obedience class in February. He was wonderful and excelled as we both learned the basic exercises. Before long I learned about competition obedience, the American Kennel Club (AKC) and obedience titles. Our first experience was earning the AKC Canine Good Citizen Award in October 1999. We went on to earn the United Kennel Club (UKC) Companion Dog Title (UCD) in September 2000 in one memorable Labor Day weekend. We did it in three straight trials with two first places and one second place.

The AKC Companion Dog Title (CD) came soon after in October with one first place. We also won lots of special prizes for highest scoring dog in different categories. We went on to earn an additional CD leg with a 3rd place finish and 3rd place in a run off (our first ever) in the non-regular (at that time) Rally class.

After all that, he became known as UCD Mr. Toby, CD, CGC!

I credit Mr. Toby with teaching me the joys of competition obedience and the communion you can achieve between dog and handler.

Our Story – Part 2

Mr. Flaki started obedience class soon after Mr. Toby, but it was a very different experience! Where Mr. Toby naturally focused on me, Flaki was more interested in the world around him. And he reacted to it – strongly!! The same techniques that worked so well with Toby, didn’t with Flaki. He earned his CGC in June 2000, but it took much longer.

After awhile, it became clear that something else was needed with Flaki. The traditional training methods I had learned weren’t working. So I started my search that eventually led me to clicker training and yet again, life has never been the same!

What a joy! To take a dog from being totally focused outward and shape him inward. To take training that had become a struggle of wills and make it something he asked to do! And they both ask to train in no uncertain terms!

I credit Flaki with forcing me to find a better way and I will always be grateful to him for it. I also credit both of them with giving me a broader experience with dogs that led me to begin teaching and now to this blog and its related Squidoo site.

This new path led me to the whole new world of Operant and Classical Conditioning, B.F. Sinner, Bob and Marion Bailey and Chicken Camp. Yes, training chickens! (More on that in future posts.) Along the road I’ve made some wonderful friends and training partners, ended up teaching basic and sub-novice level classes and private lessons as well. I’ve become an official CGC Evaluator and have also started the long process to become an AKC obedience judge. And, with the help of my friends, we held an AMBOR (American Mixed Breed Obedience Registry) Trial. As I learned with Flaki, the mixes have much less opportunity than the purebreds. So we held a Trial with ribbons, prizes, an AKC judge, etc. for mixes only. It was a major success and I hope to offer this again in the future.

You can subscribe to this blog feed for articles of interest to seasoned as well as new clicker trainers. Also, you can visit my related Squidoo site to see my suggestions on books, training equipment and related items.

Remember, when you train properly you Pay Per Click!