When Pigs Fly_ Training Success With Impossible Dogs - Jane Killion [12]
From left to right: traditional box-type clicker; a small novelty clicker, good for children with small hands; and an I-click clicker, good for people with long nails or arthritis.
The choice of what kind of clicker to use will depend on you and your dog. Clickers come in a variety of shapes and sizes and they vary in how loud they are. Most have recessed metal tongues that you need to press firmly to make the clicking sound. There are also clickers with raised buttons on them—very helpful for people with long fingernails, arthritis, or large fingers. Some dogs are frightened or startled by the sound of the click at first. There are many different types of clickers and not all of them make as loud a noise as the original box-type. If your dog is not comfortable even with one of the quieter clickers, wrap it up in a small towel to muffle the sound to start. Since we will be pairing the sound of the clicker with food rewards, in no time at all the click will actually make your dog happy and content when he hears it. For additional information on clicker training, see the Resources section at the end of the book.
Non-sense Makes the Most Sense for Training
Why You Should Use a Clicker
Why use a clicker at all? Say you want to teach your dog to run next to you and go through the middle of a tire suspended off the ground, like those used in agility. It may seem obvious to you that going through the middle of the tire is the correct behavior, but it’s not obvious to your dog. He could run around it to the left, run around it to the right, go underneath it, or jump through it. Jumping through it is only one of four possibilities, and it is the most difficult one to do. You line your dog up and move him towards the tire. He goes around it. You do nothing. He goes under it. You do nothing. He goes through it and a-hah! He hears the click (which is really shorthand for “a goodie is coming”), and he knows that jumping through the tire is what you want.
Clicking and treating at the right time can result in the behavior you desire. Just ignore other behaviors and reward what you want.
To use an example that is more practical for most people, say you want to teach your dog to lie down on a nice fluffy dog bed in a corner while you sit on the couch and watch TV. It may seem obvious to you that the dog is supposed to go lie down on that dog bed on which you have spent so much money, but he has no idea what you want. There are at least three other corners in the room, plus lots of comfy furniture, not to mention the thick oriental carpet under the coffee table and that nice little niche behind the armchair. He has lots of choices and the dog bed may or may not be the most attractive one. By clicking when your dog is actually on that bed, you can communicate to him that this is where you want him to be, and that good things happen when he is in that spot.
Could you just use a marker word like “Yes” or “Good” instead of using the clicker? Sure, but it is much less clear. The click is a completely artificial noise and has no pre-existing meaning for the dog. Thus, once you condition your dog to understand that the click equals goodie, that sound will always and only mean that. Your voice, no matter how odd a marker word you use, will never be as clear. No matter how skilled you are, no matter how hard you try to make your marker word sound exactly the same each time, there will always be nuances of meaning any time you say a word. This will slow down the learning process. This is not to say that you will never use verbal markers or that you will have to train everything using a clicker. Verbal markers (such as “Yes”) are necessary, too. You won’t always have a clicker on you and you never want to miss the opportunity to mark a desirable behavior. However, for formal training sessions when you are introducing your dog to new things, the clicker is indispensable.
Another advantage of the clicker over a spoken word is