clickerdogtraining.net

Hi Danielle!  I wanted to tell you a bit about how your program worked for me.  My husband and I live on several hundred acres and we have FIVE dogs.  Four of them are Mastiffs and one is a Great Dane!  My family tells us that we have a zoo, but we have rescued all five of these dogs.  The mastiffs were bred by a careless individual who left them in crates for months and sometimes forgot to feed them and the Great Dane was also abused.  As they grew, we had some behavioral problems, such as jumping and not coming when we called them.   Our Great Dane would destroy anything he could find if we left him home while we were gone.  One day we came home to a very large portion of our boundary fence shredded!  The fence was wooden and it was absolutely shredded.  It was difficult to deal with this and I began trying to train my dogs using clicker training.  While I could see some improvement, I’m afraid I was confusing them!  As I was out on the property and wanted them to do something, some days I wouldn’t have the clicker and it was just one huge mess.  Although I wanted to train them, I didn’t feel as if the clicker training was the right sort of thing for us.   

That’s when I started searching for something else.  Through that I found the SitStayFetch program and read about how great it was.  I wasn’t sure if it would work but it sounded better than the clicker training and I was desperate to help my dogs learn better behavior.  What really stood out with me was the fact that all the methods were positive and involved praise and rewards.  I am totally against punishing an animal – I mean, would you be excited to learn if someone was yelling at you or hitting you?  Anyway…the methods in SitStayFetch really worked and they worked QUICKLY!!!  Within just two days I could tell a difference.  After three weeks, I had my Great Dane completely trained and all but one of the Mastiffs trained.  My stubborn Mastiff, Mitchy took about a month and he was good to go!  I recommend SitStayFetch for anyone who needs help training their dogs.  It is amazing how quickly they learned and I am thrilled! We participate in activities with our local shelter as well.  Some of the dogs don’t get adopted because most people look for puppies.  We go weekly and walk and play with the older dogs and I used the SitStayFetch program on a couple of them!  When I showed the director their progress he was amazed and asked me to train the others!  It is great to see these older dogs doing tricks and displaying excellent behavior.  In fact, three of them got adopted simply because we showed potential owners the tricks!  Thanks again for helping me with my dogs and the dogs from the shelter.  It’s wonderful to know that a program like this exists. 

Clicker training is a gentle but highly effective way to train your dog using positive reinforcement. The “clicker” emits a metallic sound that provides behavioral feedback to the dog. The owner or trainer does not have to physically intervene in order to teach the dog correct behavior. The five tips below are intended to help dog owners successfully clicker train their dogs.

• 1. Start early. It is best to clicker train a dog when they are a puppy. While it is not impossible to teach an old dog new tricks, it can be difficult to break well established and long lasting behaviors and habits. Starting clicker training when your dog is a puppy ensures that your dog will know what is expected from the beginning, preventing any mixed messages or confusion. However, if your dog is already mature, he can still benefit from clicker training. You will likely have to work harder at “retraining” him to respond effectively to positive reinforcement. In addition, you must remember to be extremely patient during the training process.
  2. Establish the reward. The first few times you use the clicker near your dog, be prepared to give your dog a treat immediately after the sound. This reward teaches your dog to associate the sound of the clicker with a reward. After reinforcing this association several times, your dog will know that when they hear the clicker, they will be rewarded. In fact, you may find that even when your dog is doing something else and you use the clicker that your dog will look at you. If so, your dog is in fact associating the clicker with something positive.
  3. Be immediate. Whenever your dog engages in a positive behavior, use the clicker and then immediately give your dog a reward. This reward should be something that he enjoys. For food motivated dogs, it can be a food treat and for affectionate motivated dogs, a scratch, praise, or pat works wonders. Some people mistakenly try to keep a running tally during training sessions, with the intention of giving their dog all of their rewards at once. This simply does not work as you must be immediate with your reward. That is, your dog will not recognize the relationship between the desired behavior and the reward if you wait and your training efforts will be useless.
  4. Delay gratification. Once your dog is established in clicker training, you do not need to give your dog a reward, every single time he performs the desired behavior. In fact, you can begin utilizing the clicker only and only give him the reward intermittently. This is called delayed gratification and is used to further challenge your dog.
  5. Phase out. Once your dog learns the behavior perfectly and can do it on cue, you can then stop using the clicker too. His reward will then be the satisfaction of knowing that he did the behavior correctly. In essence the behavior becomes ingrained and you won’t have to administer a click or reward each time.

Clicker training is an effective way to work with your dog to reinforce positive behaviors. Neither you or your dog will be stressed out or confused by the training process. Once you understand the basics of clicker training, it is a fun and easy way of training your dog.