Clicker Training Basics

(Do you have to use a clicker for our classes? Click here...)

When dolphin trainers want to get a perfect jump from their charges, they don't put a leash on the dolphin, ask it to jump, then 'correct' the dolphin for not jumping and manually put it through the jumping motions. For one thing, the dolphin's body isn't well-suited to a leash. For another, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to physically manipulate the dolphin into a jump. Finally, the dolphin would get back at the trainer -- probably dousing her with a big splash of water or tossing her out of the pool (a favorite tactic of killer whales)!

In answer to this dilemma, marine mammal trainers began using Behavior Analysis techniques pioneered by B.F. Skinner, Keller Breland, and Marian Breland Bailey. It was a way to teach animals to do tricks without physical manipulation or correction. They first associated a whistle with a treat (in this case, a fish).

Once the dolphins began to expect the treat whenever they heard a whistle, the trainers began to whistle when the dolphin did something that looked like a trick. A little nose out of the water? Whistle, treat. Gradually, they got the dolphin to jump high into the air on cue, all using positive reinforcement. The process of starting small and gradually getting the behavior you want is called SHAPING. We describe that in detail below.

The idea of using a marker for desirable behavior was brought to world of pet dog training by marine mammal trainers like Karen Pryor, and dog trainers have done wonders with it. Dog trainers usually use a small box called a clicker. The clicker makes a distinctive sound when you press on it. It tells your dog “Yes, that is what I want you to do,” and it promises her a reward for a job well done. The clicker acts like the shutter of a camera, marking the exact moment she has done what you like. If you don't like using gadgets, or can't use a clicker for some other reason, you can use a marker word, like "YES" to tell the dog when it's done something you like. You can also use a hand signal or the flash of a penlight if your dog is deaf. I will assume you are using a clicker below, but if you are using something else to mark the behavior, just use it in the places where I say to click. It is a good idea to use both a marker word and a clicker (not simultaneously). The clicker a stronger reinforcer than "YES", but you almost always have your voice with you! I use the clicker to teach new behaviors, then switch over to a verbal marker when the dog understands what behavior I'm asking for.

Not sure it will work for your dog? Here's a (long) video of a trainer clicker training a sheep! Keep in mind you're seeing fairly early training, where the clicker is still being used.

Here's a great way to start teaching your dog (or cat or bird or rat) using the clicker.

Practice your clicker timing. This step has nothing to do with the dog; it's all about you. Your goal here is to become proficient at clicking when you see something that you want the dog to repeat, only you'll be practicing without the dog. Have a friend toss a ball straight up into the air (or do it yourself). Click when the ball reaches the highest point. Repeat often until you are confident with your clicker timing.
Prepare the rewards. Find some really delicious treats. I use Natural Balance, a healthy dog food that comes in a tube, chopped into pea-sized pieces. It does have sugar in it, so you may want to find something else. Freshly cooked turkey or chicken also work well. One dog I know goes crazy over bits of an orange, and another loves bananas. In general, you want to use something small and soft, so the dog gets a nibble of a treat, swallows it, and is ready to work for more. Toys make excellent treats, but they take time to deliver, so treats are better at this stage.
(optional) Charge the clicker. If the dog is shy or does not know you well, first associate the click sound with a treat. If the dog does not appear to be startled at all by the clicker, you can move on to the next stage. Clicker trainers used to believe that the clicker had to be charged up for every dog, but new research shows that isn't necessary.

Initially, the click has no meaning to the dog. In this step, you're not looking for a particular behavior, just click and treat. The only thing to be careful of is that you don't click while your dog is doing something you don't want her to do (like jump, bark, or whine).
Click, treat.
Pause
click, treat.
longer pause
click, treat.
shorter pause.

Do that ten or fifteen times   Try to vary the time for the pauses so that she knows that the click is what tells her the food is coming. Do that again a few hours later. Once she starts to look for treats after she's heard the click, you're ready to teach her how to make you click.
Start to teach a behavior using SHAPING. Now you are ready to teach a behavior. You are teaching her that she can MAKE you click and give her a treat. In the process of teaching this first behavior, you are teaching her how to learn from you. Read through all of the steps below before continuing. If she is ahead of the game, you can move faster through the steps, but only if you know where you're going!

One of the best behaviors to teach at this stage is targeting a wooden dowel with a piece of tape on one end. The reason? Dogs tend to offer the behaviors they already know when you are trying to teach the next behavior. The first behavior learned using the clicker is one of the strongest. Since this behavior will use a prop, if it's not there, she can't offer the behavior. So she'll have to give you something else. Alternatively, you can teach her to look at you as her first clicker-trained behavior.

Once you have a dog that knows how to target a wooden dowel, you can use that to teach her to turn on light switches with her nose, stop in the contact zones for agility, close doors, or just be cute pushing a ball around!

NOTE: You won't put a cue on the targeting behavior until much later (see below). Right now, you want her to figure out what to do to make you click. So zip your lip, except to give praise.

Start with the target stick behind your back or otherwise out of sight. Hold the stick and the clicker in the same hand. Then hold the stick out to her. If she makes any move toward it, like sniffing, head turning,
ear flick, anything, click and treat (C/T). Put the stick behind your back while she's eating her treat. Then repeat. Do that for maybe ten times or so and give a big reward for the last one.

Then stop, put the stick away while she's eating, and go do something else. You don't want to tire her out. Come back to it later (a few hours later or even the next day...) If she likes to play fetch, now is a good time to do it.
Reward yourself. You're juggling a lot of things here. Reward yourself for doing such a good job and being so patient with your dog. Go take a nap, call a friend, or do something else that makes you happy.
Raise your criteria. This time, you can start to make it harder to get food. Now she has to touch the stick somewhere with her muzzle (not her paws!) to get the treats. Click every time that she touches it with her muzzle. Stop before she gets tired. If she looks eager to go, really eager, move on to the next step.
Raise your criteria again. This time, she has to touch the stick even when it's moved to different positions (after she's warmed up). Any time she touches the stick in these new positions, give her a reward. If she's tired, or looks like she'll tire soon, stop. Otherwise, go on. Keep in mind we still aren't calling this behavior anything. The stick itself is the cue.
Raise your criteria again, and again, and again. In your next session, she has to touch the target stick close to the end -- after she's warmed up. The next time, she has to touch the end. Then you may want her to touch and hold her nose there. Reward only the long holds (half a second at first, then one second...) You want to make it harder each time, but not impossible. Set her up for success. If she tries more than twice with no reward, then you have probably made it too hard. Find a step in between what she used to get rewarded for and what you want her to do.
Start rewarding intermittently. This step is extremely important, because it makes her less likely to give up if you ever don't give her a treat. Think about a slot machine versus a coke machine. If you put your money in for a coke and get nothing back, you probably won't put any more money in. You expect a coke every time. But with a slot machine, you don't expect a reward and yet you are hooked. Dogs are gambling addicts, so use that to your advantage!

Start back where you left off, rewarding three or four times for touching the end of the stick. If she is constantly going to touch the stick with her nose, you can start rewarding intermittently. Occasionally just praise her lavishly, no food reward or click, and put the stick back behind your back. Reward an average of one in two responses, but not every other one. Otherwise, she will notice the pattern. Since you aren't rewarding every time, you can make sure to choose the good responses. As always, end with a good response a big reward (handful of treats on the floor does well for this). Put away your clicker, treats, and target stick while she's munching.
Put the behavior on cue. After she's touching the end and you've moved to an intermittent reward schedule, you can put it on cue. NOT BEFORE. Have the stick behind your back, say "TOUCH", then pull out the stick. She won't even notice the word, at first, but then she'll get it down after a while. Every time you ask her to "touch" and she does, click and treat.
Reward Intermittently. First an average of one in two gets rewarded, then an average of one in three. Pick the best responses to reward. For this step, you can switch to a verbal reward marker, like "YES". The clicker is best used for teaching new cues or refreshing forgotten ones. Once the dog fully understands what you want, you can fade out using the clicker.
Reward only after the cue has been given. Start bringing occasionally out the stick but not saying "touch", and don't reward or praise her for touching it. Then bring it out and say "touch", then reward and praise.
Take it on the road. Practice in different rooms of the house, with more and more distractions. If she knows other cues, mix those in: SIT, DOWN, TOUCH, treat. DOWN, TOUCH, SIT, DOWN, treat. And so on. Then head out to the yard. With other behaviors, you'll want to go further, like the sidewalk, down the street, to the dog park, etc. Each time the environment changes, she might act like she has no idea what "touch" means. That's absolutely normal and she isn't being stubborn or willful. She just has no idea what you mean, in this new context. Just go fast forward through the shaping process again, as a refresher. As always, remember to keep sessions short and upbeat, always ending on a good note.

The same basic steps outlined above for shaping can be used to teach your dog to target your hand (useful for walks), or almost anything you want, from ringing a bell (to go outside) to spinning in a circle to fetching to barking on cue. Get creative!

The clicker can also be used in conjunction with LURING and CAPTURING.

With luring, you use the target stick or a piece of food to get the dog to offer the behavior, or some approximation of it. Stop using the lure as soon as possible and use shaping to finish up the behavior. With capturing, you click and treat whenever the dog offers a complete behavior. For example, to teach a dog to stretch, find out the times and situations when she will stretch. Then, just before you know she will stretch, say "stretch" and when she is stretching, click and treat. Soon she will be offering the stretch more and more. Click and treat each time, attempting to say the cue before, or at least during the stretch. Clicking your dog for making eye contact with you is another great use of capturing. Have fun!

How to tell the difference between a trainer that uses the clicker and a clicker trainer (and why you should care)

Clicker trainers use the clicker to shape behavior - they make the dog responsible for its own learning. Other trainers use the clicker, but they do a lot of luring and just use the clicker to mark the behavior. Some trainers even use a clicker along a choke chain or prong collar, which makes the clicker virtually useless. Clicker trainers focus on reinforcing behavior.

If the trainer is doing all of the action, the power of the clicker is not fully utilized. I have heard people say they have tried clicker training and given it up, because the clicker didn't help all that much. Those people didn't use the clicker as a shaping tool. Animals (including humans) that are taught to problem solve are much faster learners. The problem is that luring seems faster - the dog goes through the motions of the behavior much sooner. But the dog's brain is not engaged. I compromise with my students - they can lure the dog 3 times, but then they have to start free shaping. The payoff of free shaping is that you end up with a smart, well-behaved dog, not just a well-behaved dog. That means that if you want to teach your dog something new, it's a snap. The other payoff is that your dog will work for you without food in your hand - luring tends to make dogs very food-dependent, unless you are careful to wean off of the lure.

The easy way to tell a clicker trainer from a trainer-using-a-clicker is to watch who's moving more when going over a new behavior. If the human is the one initiating movement, that human is not a clicker trainer.

No guarantee is stated or implied in this article and if you follow any of the advice in it, you do so at your own risk. If you ever feel that you, your dog, or others are at risk because of your dog, please seek the services of a professional dog trainer.

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