At the core of every good dog training program is an understanding of canine motivation. With dogs, that motivation is quite specific: Dogs want food. Clicker training for dogs or various types of puppies takes advantage of this fact by pairing food with the clicker to obtain good results.
Here’s how it works.
Your dog could care less about the click you make. However, when you always provide them with a treat each time you click, they will soon begin to associate the two and start to pay attention to the sound.
Every time you want to reward a behavior, click your clicker and give them a treat.
However, even if you accidentally click at behavior that you are trying to eliminate, you must still give them the treat or they will lose interest in the noise.
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Get Your Dog To Respond Primarily To You By Clicker Training Them
Don’t be confused by this. Even though you are using treats to reward your dog or puppy, you want your dog to primarily respond to you.
Try carrying treats in your pocket without rewarding your dog with one. They’ll quickly learn that it takes more to get one of those treats than simply being around you.
Instead, place the treats into a few canisters located around your home.
When the dog performs as expected, reach into the canister after clicking, and give them their reward. They will soon learn that pleasing you is the best way to get that deeply desired dog biscuit.
Click To Reward Not To Gain Attention
If your dog is behaving badly and you want to stop the behavior, do not get their attention by clicking.
Effective clicker training for dogs uses clicks to let the dog know when they have done something right.
Do this consistently and your dog will grow much more responsive to the training.
Begin by pairing treats with the clicks in the beginning and move to this step to provide effective feedback to your dog as time passes.
Dogs get confused when you throw too many things at once.
More than anything else, besides food, they want to please you. That’s why the effective dog trainer breaks any task down into a series of steps and rewards along the way.
Make sure that they are confident in one step before moving onto the next.
Refine And Teach New Behaviors With Your Clicker
Once your dog has mastered the basics of lying down, for example, you can refine that behavior and get them to lie down for longer periods of time.
Try bouncing a ball in front of him and clicking when they stay down in spite of the temptation. New behaviors can be added over time using this method.
Using treats and the sound of the clicker, dogs can be rapidly trained.
This method is not only effective on young dogs. It can also be used to eliminate bad behaviors in older dogs, in addition to teaching them new tricks.
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