"what is wrong with clicker training"

99.9% of dogs love to walk.  Trust me, it is not just ours.  Show them a leash and they go bonkers.

 

ORIGINAL: snownose

Snownose: Same here. My dogs love to walk. They even know which jacket is the "winter walking jacket".

Hahaha, there is only "A" jacket involved here.........lol, be it a winter or a lighter jacket....just the noise, and the dogs go nuts.......not even handing out treats matches that excitement.[]

ORIGINAL: Chuffy

  I actually believe he enjoys food more if he works for it.

Same here.  Am I alone in noticing they seem to work harder for the click-treat than the treat on it's own?  Or am I imagining it?

Sally actually seems to like to work for her food in general.  Often we do what we call her "treasure hunt" where we put her in a sit and spread her kibble all over the place, then release to let her find it.  Sh gets WAY more excited over that then eating out of a bowl, and Jack (who as a lab believes it is his job to get ubber excited over food) gets extra, extra, EXTRA excited he sees we are putting his food into the Buster Cube.

BTW--We did a new game today--one where I put Sally in a down-stay, hide, and tel her to "find," and click/treat when she does--she loves it.

Sally actually seems to like to work for her food in general.  Often we do what we call her "treasure hunt" where we put her in a sit and spread her kibble all over the place, then release to let her find it.  Sh gets WAY more excited over that then eating out of a bowl, and Jack (who as a lab believes it is his job to get ubber excited over food) gets extra, extra, EXTRA excited he sees we are putting his food into the Buster Cube.

Yes, but its more than that.... What I meant was, say I use a bowl of kibble to aid a training session or to let them play "hide & seek".  It works really well and they seem to enjoy the food more..... but add a clicker in and they work even harder yet again.  Something that might normally be too challenging, I'm not having success with, maybe the dog is giving up and stopping offering me behaviours...... grab the clicker and try again and it's like the dog will do anything - and I mean anything to get the CT, no matter how challenging it is.  I just wondered if I was the only one that noticed that.  I suppose when its challenging the reason they dont get it is because its too confusing so they lose motivation, the clicker seems to clarify precisely what will earn them the reward, taking away that confusion..... or maybe I just got some weird dogs.

I think you may have hit it on the head with the "clarification" part.

 It may help them to zoom in on specifics.

Funny, I was reading the article and generally speaking I ended up with the same reactions as everybody else. The thing that got me is that the whole "sam the dog trainer" was really ringing a bell, and now I remember. Some time ago I was reading leerburg's forum, and this guy's name was mentioned a couple of times, for what I understood he also wrote an article on protection dogs that pretty much everybody on leerburg thought was laughable. I get the impression that this guys writes these papers for the sakes of writting papers, no backgroun info and no real experience to build from, jsut something nice to tell clients about "oh I've written several papers on the subject", makes me wonder about his credibility.

This part pretty much proves your point....

[font="arial"] Operant conditioning theory incorrectly assumes:    All you have to deal with is observable behavior; You can ignore the feelings and motivations of the dog and still get good results; Genetics doesn't play an important part in behavior; Negative reinforcement and punishment are irrelevant; You can ignore the different social systems that animals live within (packs, herds, schools, flocks, etc.) The only behavior that is important is voluntary behavior[/font]