Ever wonder how dogs in movies do the most outrageous things? From blowing bubbles in water to walking on a tight rope, these dogs all learned using a proven method of training called Clicker Training. What clicking training does is pair a stimulus such as a sound/click to the behavior as a means to strengthen that behavior.

When first training your dog with a clicker it is strongly recommended to do “free clicking” whereby you click the dog for doing anything. This is easily done when you are at home watching tv. Just click and treat during commercial breaks. Dogs love this and will pay attention to you quickly. This is to teach the dog that the sound he hears means good things are coming (i.e. food). Once this is established you move on to teaching specific target behaviors. Always remember that in the beginning, the click is always paired with food once the behavior occurred. As well, every click means food. Once the behavior or a part of the behavior is strong, a trainer can do multiple clicks for that behavior before rewarding with food.

So how do you train a behavior? First, find a behavior. For example, have your dog go under a chair and lay down. Once you find a behavior, break it down and start clicking and rewarding by means of shaping that behavior. For this behavior, click when the dog looks at the chair, then once that is solid do multiple clicking for looking at the chair and then start clicking only when your dog touches the chair. Then start moving up the shaping process by clicking when the dog’s head is under the chair and so on and so on until the desired behavior is achieved. Depending on your dog and your dog’s ability it can take hours or days to learn behaviors via clicker training.

Points to remember:
- If your dog is doing alternative behaviors that you don’t want (for example barking, sitting, laying down) it is an indication that you are going too fast and demanding too much of your dog. Go back down a few steps and reward prior behaviors.
- Don’t fade food rewards too quickly. Only when your dog is consistently doing a behavior is it wise to reward every few clicks.
- Have fun with the clicker. Get a box and do “everything you can do with a box” game. Or, grab socks and put tea bags in one and train to smell a target. Other fun behaviors: putting on sunglasses or a hat, turning on/off the light, opening the fridge, weave in and out of your legs.
- Clicker training is based on shaping a desired behavior. It is done in steps. Don’t expect your dog to accomplish the behavior in one sitting.
- Make sure to practice the behavior in multiple settings as a means to generalize the behavior.

Good luck!

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