• 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.