Clicker Training

I can't hear about clicker training without thinking about a conversation between a whole bunch of customer service trainers at AirTouch, or maybe it was Verizon Wireless at that time.  I was training a class about training customer service skills and folks had to give a short presentation.  Tren's was all about clicker training a chicken.  I think he got the idea from Ann, who was big into dog training at the time.  The details are hazy, but I do remember all of us laughing uproariously.  I really loved that team.

Anyway, today I learned the first steps on how to clicker train a dog.  Essentially, you click the clicker at the moment the dog is doing something right, and it freezes them in the moment, which allows the human to give a reward, generally in the form of a treat.  It sounds like a good idea, but it seems a bit unwieldy. I admit that I learned just enough to be dangerous, so I need to learn more before using it or drawing any conclusions.

Buckley roasting by an open fire.

Perhaps you can tell from the topic so far that today was the first day of the dog training class I'm taking with Buckley at Petco. Shockingly, Buckly was really well behaved for the first class.  He was calm, did almost no whining at all, and (although restrained) rarely pulled to get to other dogs.  I was pretty happy with his behavior. At least his behavior there. Today.  I'm not super happy with his behaviors when we're out walking, and that is why we're in class.

Today's lesson was two fold. 1) Dogs are not people. 2) Teaching your dog to watch you and only you.  Sounds simple, no? Lesson number one was a good reminder that yelling at, hitting, and getting excited when a dog has done something bad are all forms of positive reinforcement for poor behavior on the part of the dog.  All of those things are attention, which are better than no attention, which is often why the dog has poor behavior in the first place. So, finding a single "no" sound (like eenh, or uh uh) to show your displeasure is better than all of those other responses because it is less confusing for the dog. Upon reflection, that sounds fair. The second lesson involves hand signals and lots of food.  It can also involve clicker training, if we want.  Essentially, you put food in front of the dog's nose, then move the food to your forehead (click once the dog looks at you), then give the dog a treat for looking at you. Eventually, with consistent use, the dog will always look to you for guidance.  Cool!

So that is it for the dog lesson.  It took about an hour to train the humans those two things to work on with our dogs for the rest of the week.  Next week involves sit, down and stay.  I can't wait! In the meanwhile, I'll be working on watch.  Oh, one other thing... it seems like my poor behavior is causing Buckley's aggressive behavior against other dogs.  I'll have to work on that!  Whenever we come across other dogs he gets really aggressive.  Since he did that before and I gave negative reinforcement (attention), it seems he'll just keep doing it.  So this week, I have to work on MY response to meeting other dogs.  Wish me luck!

Be happy and healthy!