The first video in a series of four called Clicker Fun with Dr. Deborah Jones takes you through the basics of Operant Conditioning (on which Clicker training is based ). Delightful and fun, the video is 30 minutes long and starts with the definitions of operant conditioning, primary reinforcers and then moves on to the first actual step of clicker training your dog, charging the clicker.

Dr. Jones explains clearly why the clicker tends to be more effective and gives you three basic guidelines for using the clicker, emphasizing that a treat must always follow the click even if you clicked by accident.

 What was interesting for me to see, was that you don’t necessarily have to be as fast in delivering the treat as I thought (I kept thinking I was doing it wrong) and that if the click you delivered is not exact you do not need to think you are doing permanent damage to your dog.

The video goes on to describe three tools to “get your behavior”.  Shaping, luring and targeting and then finally shows you how to move from a cue or hand signal to the verbal command.  Clicker training does not follow classical training in saying the command and then expecting the dog to do it and correcting it when it doesn’t do it correctly.  Clicker training gets the behavior, associates it with a hand signal, then when the dog knows how to follow that you add the verbal signal or command as we know it (Clicker trainers do not like using the word “command”, since the dog is working with you not for you).

All in all clicker training seems to make the dog much more eager to “work” with you and try new things or new behaviors, it is up to you what you make of those different behaviors.  Your dog will learn that a click means “you did OK” and that his owner is happy with him, which I think is very important to build their confidence. One cute game is 101 things to do with a box – which makes me flashback to my mother telling me that no matter how expensive a toy she got me, I would always end up playing for hours with the box.