What's so good about clicker training?

Clicker training involves using a small device called a clicker to communicate with your dog when you are teaching her a new skill. The clicker makes a distinctive ‘click' sound that means: ‘You did the right thing just now, and a treat is on its way to reward you'. The reason for using the clicker (rather than just rewarding the dog with a treat) is for the precise timing that the clicker provides. If you are rewarding your dog for doing something good - such as sitting when you say ‘Sit' - the reward has to come immediately after the dog does what you wanted. A delay of more than a second can make it hard for the dog to figure out what the reward is for. Most of us are just not coordinated enough to deliver the treat in time - it can take a few seconds to get the treat out of your pocket or pouch and put it in your dog's mouth. And it is impossible to deliver the treat instantaneously if the dog is some distance away. Using a clicker to indicate to the dog exactly which behaviour is being rewarded gives us a very precise communication tool.

Using a clicker, you can teach your dog some very clever and complex behaviours by ‘shaping' - that is, rewarding approximations to the final behaviour. Trying to teach these complex behaviours without using a clicker (or other ‘reward marker') can be a lot harder, or even impossible.

Dogs tend to love clicker training! For them, it becomes a game called: ‘Figure out what I have to do to make that click happen'. They tend to try out lots of different behaviours to see which one will be successful and, as a result, can act very playfully during training sessions. This is a big contrast from the attitude of dogs who are trained using choke chains and other aversive techniques, who don't tend to enjoy their training sessions. Just watch your dog's eyes light up when you bring out the clicker and it's training time!