More on clickers

Wow, I am so behind. I will try to hit a few of the most relevant topics, and then hope and pray that I can get back on a daily schedule. First, a word about clickers.

Several of you have asked me what this clicker business is all about, and I will now do my teacher proud by explaining it to you in scientific yet understandable terms.
The clicker is a “marker,” in that it marks a behavior. It works much the same way as a “yes” or a “good dog,” but it has a few advantages – it is very short, so takes a snapshot of the exact moment the behavior is taking place (if you’re timing it right – see previous post about box-peeing for an example of a poorly timed click). Also, it is totally consistent, because it always sounds the same, while your voice might change.

So, you pair the clicker with a reinforcer (food, usually), something the dog understands inherently to be good. You could also pair it with a swat on the nose if you wanted to use it to stop behaviors from happening, but that’s not what we’re doing here. So you make the good association: clicker = food/yay. Then you can use it in a number of ways that are too complicated to explain, but for example, you can sit around watching your dog and waiting for a desirable behavior to occur, then click it. That’s called “capturing.”

Right now we are using it for a bunch of different things. First is “target,” where we ask a dog to put two front feet on a raised box. We started by rewarding any acknowledgement (other than peeing on it) of the box. Then increased it to movement towards the box. Then it was touching the box, then finally putting the feet on the box. Then we started adding the command “target.” I think eventually we phase out the clicker, but I’m not positive, we haven’t gotten there yet.
We’re also teaching “spin,” which is just a cute little trick where the dog literally spins around once. Joker does this at 80 mph and about two feet off the ground. Sugar moves at her own sweet pace, but she still seems to be enjoying it.

We’re also teaching “back,” where the dog just takes a couple steps backward. As I understand it, this will be useful for a number of different obedience commands later on.

Finally, we are working on “touch,” which is when the dog puts its nose to a target (a plastic lid for Joker, and my hand for Sugar, because she’s scared of the plastic lid…weird dog). Joker already has the command for this pretty well down. Sugar is a bit slower at all of this, but she’s making progress. I had basically written her off as a clicker dog, but she had a breakthrough with target and touch this past week.

Speaking of poorly timed clicks, I’m deeply embarrassed to report that Joker’s first pee-on-the-box episode was not his last. And, bless his wee heart, the second took place in front of the entire class. We had just done dthis AWESOME session, everyone was very impressed with us, and I was all proud of myself, and then right at the last second, he lifted his leg and emptied out on the box. Much laughter ensued. It really was pretty funny, but I was a bit embarrassed, and when the teacher asked how I was going to fix it, all I could come up with was “potty him before each session.” The correct answer, class, is “don’t let him do that again.” He almost tried one more time, and I caught him, so I believe we are safely past the box-peeing portion of Joker’s training.