Resistance is futile!!!!!

I might give it a shot with my Husky/Chow mix. He will be 1 year old on the 11th, and boy, is he stubborn.
There might be a slight roblem though, he is not very food motivated, don't get me wrong, he loves treats, but if he has to work for it, well, then he thinks it's not worth it.
 
We'll see how far I will get with him in the next couple of months.....if there hasn't been much improvement then I will give the clicker a shot.
 

Chuffy,  my main plan is to use it to help Gaia with her reactivity and my ultimate goal is to get her into competitive obedience.  This is going to be the biggest challenge of her life, since she's super reactive.  If I can get her to be task intensive rather than environmentally reactive she will have won the best contest of all.  Every time we have a tiny little breakthrough, which hasn't been too often lately, I well up with pride.
 
With Xerxes I think I'll be using CT to teach him alot more behaviors.  He's already mastered more things than I can think to name, and where there's willingness to learn, there should be willingness to teach.

Hey Snownose,

I clicker trained a dog that is not food motivated at *all*. The trick is to find another motivator: toys, bellyrubs, a game of tug, water, etc. Motivators can change a lot--in the dog run in July, it's all about WATER, but water in the house is not that interesting. Know what i mean?

Have fun, and if you want to talk about it, give a shout!

We took a clicker obedience class about a year ago, and I was incredibly disapointed. The person teaching the class wasn't the actual trainer, just a person that subs for her (any questions we had were answered with a "let me ask _____", and of course ____ never answered); her explanation of operant conditioning was... "for dummies" at best. It was during that class that our dog started showing signs of reactivity and the sub-trainer was CLUELESS, the actual trainer who claims to be a behaviourist as well never showed up. After 6 weeks of class something that happened just prooved what a waste of time/money it had been, most of us were able to get the dogs to at least sit, down, come, stay and somewhat heel. Well, one of the ladies, EVERY time she had to sit (or do anything with her dog for that matter) would go into her fanny pack, pull her clicker, a treat, give the command, lure her dog, click and treat, and the trainer didn't make any comments or remarks, I'm guessing that to this day that lady hasn't gotten past click/treat. Another lady would just come in, sit in a chair, with her dog laying at her feet, and never do anything "because she couldn't get the dog to listen to her", again, our genius trainer did nothing. At the end of the day it wasn't so much a class, but a $150 clicker & treat bag combo.



I live in a small college town (100K people, 60K of which are students) so there aren't many options as far as trainers go. Although I've read books and seen a couple of videos etc., and I feel like I understand the theory behind it, I feel like this is the sort of thing I have to see or be guided at least for a while to get it right. I firmly believe in the benefits of clicker training, I simply have no one to teach me hands on. The trainer we work with right now is, how do I put this?, possitive but not a clicker trainer by any means. I guess you could describe her as close to "all possitve" as you can get without being a clicker trainer, if that makes sense at all.

For ME (and my small ADHD brain) I found clicker training complicated...like an added step. I completed two courses found other methods (+R) more strightforward for me.

ORIGINAL: eley

We took a clicker obedience class about a year ago, and I was incredibly disapointed. The person teaching the class wasn't the actual trainer, just a person that subs for her (any questions we had were answered with a "let me ask _____", and of course ____ never answered); her explanation of operant conditioning was... "for dummies" at best. It was during that class that our dog started showing signs of reactivity and the sub-trainer was CLUELESS, the actual trainer who claims to be a behaviourist as well never showed up. After 6 weeks of class something that happened just prooved what a waste of time/money it had been, most of us were able to get the dogs to at least sit, down, come, stay and somewhat heel. Well, one of the ladies, EVERY time she had to sit (or do anything with her dog for that matter) would go into her fanny pack, pull her clicker, a treat, give the command, lure her dog, click and treat, and the trainer didn't make any comments or remarks, I'm guessing that to this day that lady hasn't gotten past click/treat. Another lady would just come in, sit in a chair, with her dog laying at her feet, and never do anything "because she couldn't get the dog to listen to her", again, our genius trainer did nothing. At the end of the day it wasn't so much a class, but a $150 clicker & treat bag combo.



I live in a small college town (100K people, 60K of which are students) so there aren't many options as far as trainers go. Although I've read books and seen a couple of videos etc., and I feel like I understand the theory behind it, I feel like this is the sort of thing I have to see or be guided at least for a while to get it right. I firmly believe in the benefits of clicker training, I simply have no one to teach me hands on. The trainer we work with right now is, how do I put this?, possitive but not a clicker trainer by any means. I guess you could describe her as close to "all possitve" as you can get without being a clicker trainer, if that makes sense at all.

Wow, sorry you had such a bad experience.  Just as with any other method, there are good trainers and not so good trainers.

Wow, sorry you had such a bad experience.  Just as with any other method, there are good trainers and not so good trainers.

on the plus side, the treat bag we got is really nice......

For ME (and my small ADHD brain) I found clicker training complicated...like an added step. I completed two courses found other methods (+R) more strightforward for me.

  [
 
I'm wondering if this is my problem too (my small ADHD brain).  I haven't given it the best try yet, but I am feeling doopey about it, like its complicated but should be simple.

No sweetie.  It is not complicated.  It is simple.  Trust me.  I have read your posts and you are a pretty smart cookie.  (cookie,,,get it?).

Once you have shaping good behaviors down, then you move onto re-shaping bad behaviors.  It is the same concept.

Just as shaping includes a chain of behaviors, (look at box, smell box, put paw in box, jump in box) re-shaping is breaking a chain that already exists.

Dog looks at box, owner asks for a sit, c/t, now dog looks at  box and sits.

ORIGINAL: luvmyswissy



I'm wondering if this is my problem too (my small ADHD brain).  I haven't given it the best try yet, but I am feeling doopey about it, like its complicated but should be simple.

Ok, here I am on the dark side. jk [sm=devil.gif] Becuase no one has ever shown me *in person* that a clicker works any better than my own voice. So...[sm=dance.gif] And working with dogs over a couple of *decades* I know a lot of trainers so their skills aren't in question here. I'm not against it, just see no real need for it. I also know it doesn't work in certain fields of dog training, like bite or scent work. IMPO

Let the games begin.

As for me, I shall return to the light.[]



 

Hey Luv,

It's not you... it's like learning anything, there is a learning curve. I had a hard time juggling the clicker--I use YES! as a marker because I always have my voice with me, and I only use the clicker in my house when I am playing games (I do find that the clicker works better when you're trying to communicate that you are playing a game like 101 Things With The Box or whatever...) And I found some of the finer points like fading the reward difficult to master.

There is also a lot of theory behind clicker training that is interesting, but is not particularly helpful in the beginning. In this way, clicker training is a lot like learning how to meditate. Meditating is really, really easy. You sit on a pillow and count your breaths. But the reasons why it's good for you or feels good or makes you think of interesting things are so fascinating... you could really waste all that time you were supposed to be meditating on thinking about why you're meditating, or whether you're doing it well, or whatever. Bah!

If I were you, I would just dive in without trying to understand too much. Do something really simple like "watch me" or hand targeting... I think there are detailed instructions for this on clickertraining.com or Suzanne Clothier's site, and just think about it like following a recipe and see how it goes.

One of the best things about it to my mind is: its pretty hard, if not nigh on impossible to screw up!  So just relax and have fun with it.  You won't do any harm.

ORIGINAL: Awsomedog

Ok, here I am on the dark side. jk [sm=devil.gif] Becuase no one has ever shown me *in person* that a clicker works any better than my own voice. So...[sm=dance.gif] And working with dogs over a couple of *decades* I know a lot of trainers so their skills aren't in question here. I'm not against it, just see no real need for it. I also know it doesn't work in certain fields of dog training, like bite or scent work. IMPO

Let the games begin.

As for me, I shall return to the light.[]

The clicker is just a marker, but what makes it different is that there is no fluctuation, no change in modulation.  It is a consistent sound that  means "That's it! Reinforcer on the way."  Until you try it correctly, you will never be convinced, so no point explaining more, since you aren't interested anyway.
And, there are people who are now using clicker training in bite (Andreas Mueller) and scent work (Dee Ganley)- go figure.
www.clickandtreat.com/FF01.htm

Okay, I have admittedly absolutely no clue about protection or bite work, but I know a little bit about scent tracking work and why wouldn't one be able to use a clicker to teach it? Given that my dog is smelling about one billion different smells when I take him out, I think a way to help him narrow those down to the one that I'd actually like him to track would be pretty useful.