Clicker Training

written by Kerry Bradbury

Some Tricks

Although clicker training is extremely useful in teaching many important and very useful behaviours to our dogs it is also great for teaching them other fun (and often completely useless) tasks. Dogs can learn pretty much anything your imagination can come up with from rollover to turn off the light to riding on your back. Many of these things are made immensely easier to teach by using a clicker. This chapter contains a couple of ideas to get you started - hopefully you will be able to work out how to clicker train your dog to do anything else you would like to teach him.

Rollover

This is an easy trick for many dogs and a good place to start. Some dogs will do this naturally for a fuss whereas other will find it a little uncomfortable initially.

Start with your dog in a down. Do not ask them for this, wait for it to happen. This is important because you may otherwise end up with a dog who thinks that ‘down’ now means ‘rollover’, due to you asking for a down but then clicking rollover. Watch for the point when they relax over on to one haunch. Click & treat. Repeat this several times.

Now wait for them to relax more in this direction, and perhaps go onto their side.

Next get him to go from one side to another, or just to the middle with legs in the air!

Next wait for him to go all the way over and back onto his feet.

You may find that you can achieve all this in one session, or that it will take several. Take it at your dog’s own pace. The stages above are fairly big leaps – you may need to break things down much more than this. Don’t worry about taking your time and clicking very small stages.

TIP If you are patient and your dog wants the rewards you have to offer you shouldn’t have to lure your dog to achieve this trick. If you do need to, use a lure to get your dog onto his side initially, and perhaps to get him all the way over and on to his feet. Give this help with the lure only a couple of times and then let your dog know there is a reward on offer and allow him to experiment.

Don’t forget - don’t add the verbal signal until you have the complete behaviour being performed confidently. Once you have this, show the dog the reward, give the verbal signal and then simply wait for the behaviour to happen before clicking and treating.

As with all the behaviours in the previous sections you can then proof the behaviour and refine it by rewarding only the best ones if you are not already happy with what you have got. Don’t forget that when you incorporate this into your dog’s repertoire he may rollover whatever you ask him. Reward only rollovers that you ask for and he will learn to listen for the correct cue.

Wave

The first stage is to get a raised paw.

Most dogs will choose to raise a paw to your hand quite quickly if you show a food treat and then withhold it from him. This is a natural reaction that you can then click.

If your dog does not raise his paw readily then you may need to waggle the treat around a little to get him to do so. Alternatively this would be an excellent candidate for the use of targeting - targeting the stick with a paw (or your hand) and then using the target to shape your dog to wave.

This can be broken down into small stages of lifting the paw higher and higher if necessary. Click each time the paw is lifted, gradually waiting for more and more effort as your dog’s confidence grows. Try to ensure you only click when your dog is sitting and raising a paw, otherwise you may just get jumped on. If your dog is not confident raising his paw whilst sitting, you could get the wave first and then work for a sit and wave later.

Once you have the paw being raised high to your hand you can then click the whole action of lifting the paw, reaching and perhaps repeating the action so you have a wave.

Remember not to add the verbal signal until you have the whole behaviour that you want.

Back up

This is getting your dog to move away from you, backwards.

This is a fun thing to do with your dog, and made much easier with a clicker. Start by showing your dog a food reward and waiting. You will probably find that your dog will instinctively move around, with excitement or to try and figure out what you want. Click any slight backward movement and get your dog to come back towards you for the treat by making sure they have it from your hand.

Start by clicking slight backward movement and once you think your dog has figured it out, hold out for more and more.

TIP If your dog just won’t back away from you, start them off by moving towards them, perhaps with the food treat held out in front of you. If you do this, try to only do it a few times. Otherwise your dog will learn to move backwards with you, rather than away from you.

Some dogs, once they get to a certain distance from you will tend to curve around. It may be useful to practice in a long corridor, or with obstacles, to teach them to go straight.

As always, wait until you have strong behaviour before adding the verbal cue. This is a behaviour that you can keep building on once the cue has been established as it can be a very short or a very long behaviour.

There are an endless number of behaviours that you can teach your dog with a clicker. Anything you can think of and your dog can physically do, can be taught. The important thing is to use your imagination, and have fun!!

Happy clickering!