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Saturday, 05 September 2009 13:21

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Many dog owners today like to use dog clicker training to train their dogs. There are many advantages to using this dog training method.

What is dog clicker training? Is it something that would work with your dog? We’ll take a look at clicker training in this article.

Dog clicker training is a form of positive reinforcement training. The idea with positive reinforcement is to reward a dog for doing something you desire him to do and to basically ignore the dog’s actions when he does something undesirable.

There is very little correction or punishment in positive reinforcement training. That goes against the premise of the training.

The clicker -- which costs a couple of dollars at a pet supply store or from an online pet store -- is used in the following way in dog clicker training. Say that you want to teach your dog to sit. Your dog is wandering around the living room and he happens to sit down.

You click your clicker and give him some treats, telling him what a good boy he is. Your dog is astonished. He has no idea what he just did. Now he’s up and walking around again. As soon as he sits you click again and give him more treats.

He’s a happy dog! But he’s still not sure what he did. But he’s starting to like that clicker. He may start doing lots of things to try to get you to click. When he figures out that simply sitting will get you to click he is VERY happy! So, you click and give him more treats.

You put the command word “Sit!” with the action. Your dog starts sitting and sitting and sitting. This is something he’s good at! You have just taught your dog to sit by using the clicker.

That’s how it seems. To analyze it, you have used the clicker to shape your dog’s behavior. When your dog did something you liked, you clicked to “mark” the behavior. Then you rewarded him with praise and treats. You will have to taper off the treats as you move on to teach your dog other things.

People who like dog clicker training say it’s the best, easiest way to train a dog because it’s a very positive approach. There are no corrections, no punishment. You only reward for positive behavior. Dogs like clicker training and they learn quickly using this method.

It’s also easy to teach them complicated tricks and actions because you can use the clicker to teach things in small stages.

You can also begin clicker training with very young puppies. Puppies as young as 6-8 weeks old can start to learn dog training commands with clicker training. Dog clicker training is also a method that can be used by virtually anyone.

Children can use this method of training as well as disabled people who want to train their dogs. It takes no special skills or physical strength.

Critics of dog clicker training say that the dogs are very food-motivated. Take away the food and the dogs might not be so eager to learn. Maybe they don’t keep performing what they’ve learn when there are fewer treats.

Other critics say that dogs do need to be corrected sometimes and that you can’t always train a dog with only positive methods. Sometimes there has to be a punishment.

Many dog training commands can be easily taught by using the dog training clicker. Many very good trainers recommend clicker training. Clicker training is very popular right now.

For many people, including obedience trainers, it’s taken the place of the choke chain collar and repetitious training that once dominated obedience training.

Does dog clicker training work for all dogs? Probably not. Dogs aren’t all the same and the important thing in any kind of training is to find what works best for each individual dog. But dog clicker training is a good way to train many dogs.