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Maplewood Flat Coated Retrievers & Cardigan Welsh Corgis
Sharon, MAkatrin@maplewooddog.com
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Over the years, I have done much research, reading and talking to many many, many handlers and experts in the dog world. Through my experiences, I have found that for me clicker training is a very successful, positive and rewarding method. Regal & James have been train solely through clicker and clicker methods and I am always amazed at how much they are able to learn with the speed and high enjoyment level that they do. Clicker training is a method of animal training that goes back to the operant conditioning research done by psychologist B.F. Skinner. The basics of it are that the dog learns that a marker tells them that "Yes, You just did the right thing!" and then that marker will be rewarded with some wonderful goodie be it a toy, treat, game of tug etc. Dogs who are trained in this manner very quickly pick up that they are to offer behaviors and the more the offer the more they will be rewarded with the click. For Regal this game is fabulous. He loves trying to figure out what he will get clicked for and what he has to do to keep those clicks coming. Contrary to popular public belief, the clicker itself is not a toy. Dogs are working to hear the click and the clicker is used to shape behaviors. The click itself is not a command, you don't have 1 click for sit, 2 for down etc. The clicker is just a marker. Those who train with this method learn the importance of patience. A lot of clicker is waiting for a behavior that you can click. It helps to have a plan ahead of time and the steps it will take to get to that behavior. Once you have a plan on what your criteria for this final behavior will be, you are ready to plan how you will teach this behavior. Another very important piece of clicker is that the game must be FUN!! Any properly trained clicker dog loves his clicker, loves his handler and loves to play this game! Regal will initiate the clicker game on his own with me and begin offering random behaviors in chances that I will click and reward. This method is also very low stress on the handler so none of that frustrating yelling "sit, sit, sit" over and over again or dealing with a choke collar. Using the clicker, Regal & James were trained mostly off lead and on lead with only a flat buckle collar. But, the one thing to keep in mind is that every dog is different and that patience, time and a positive attitude are key. |
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Send all comments to katrin@maplewooddog.com Copyright (c) 2007-2008 Maplewood Flat-Coated Retrievers No artwork, photos or writings to be reproduced without author permission |
