The Clicker
The clicker is a wonderful training tool! It gives you a clear way to tell your dog “yes” in the moment she is doing something good. You “mark” the desired behavior by clicking at the exact moment the dog does what you want her to do—or, in the early stages, comes close to doing it. Dogs are very good at remembering what action brought the click—and therefore the treat.
Be consistent: The dog always gets a reward after the “click.”
After the dog understands that “click” means “treat,” you can teach the dog to work for the click. An easy start is to teach a target, because this skill is pretty intuitive. Pick a target—for example, a stick. The moment the dog pays attention to the target, click and reward. Move the target to get her attention if you need to. Click and reward the dog’s smallest glance at the target until she understands—and that’s kindergarten in our “baby steps” approach to training.
It’s important to understand the difference between a marker and a cue:
- A cue—in this case, “pick it up”—tells the dog what you want. Every behavior has a different cue, though the cue for that behavior should be consistent every time.
- A marker—click or “yes”—marks the desired behavior that just happened. You use the same marker no matter what skill you are teaching.
This video shows me introducing my dogs to the clicker, and then using the clicker to teach. The first step is to “charge” the clicker, which means teaching the dog that “click” means “treat.” You simply click, reward, repeat.
The video shows how we worked in one session up to high school—picking up the stick. College would be training the dog to do something with the stick after picking it up.
You may think the dogs in the video learn suspiciously quickly! That’s the magic of the clicker. Once your dogs are used to learning with the clicker, as ours are, they’ll almost become mind readers. Note that I don’t have to say anything during the video. Teaching verbal or hand cues for “pick it up” would be a next logical step, but you don’t want to teach these all at once.
