Evolution Of A Clicker Trainer

I have been train­ing dogs for years and have not always been a “clicker trainer.”  I am what is known in the clicker train­ing world as a “cross-over trainer,” hav­ing used more tra­di­tional meth­ods before becom­ing a con­vert to clicker train­ing.  In the 1980s and 1990s, I was not aware of oper­ant con­di­tion­ing, clicker train­ing meth­ods; how­ever, I always found myself seek­ing out the least harsh meth­ods of train­ing that were avail­able  I was never sat­is­fied with the train­ing meth­ods that I was learn­ing about.  Many years ago, when I was work­ing as a vio­lent crimes pros­e­cu­tor, I became friendly with a K-9 police offi­cer who had trained dogs for the police and the mil­i­tary.  My fam­ily had res­cued a new six month old Shepherd-Rottweiler cross that was out of con­trol.  The offi­cer offered to help and began train­ing “Mur­doch.” I couldn’t stand watch­ing him use, what I later learned, were tra­di­tional train­ing meth­ods.  He was con­stantly cor­rect­ing the dog in ways that I felt were abu­sive.  I couldn’t under­stand why Mur­doch was being pun­ished for sim­ply act­ing like a dog that hadn’t been trained.  It was not his fault that he was act­ing that way but there he was get­ting pun­ished.  It stressed out both him and me.  That was it for me and harsh train­ing meth­ods.  But then what?  I still needed to train my dog.

Some time after that, I was up very late one night watch­ing TV and a dog train­ing infomer­cial came on hosted by David Dike­man.  Dikeman’s  dog train­ing sys­tem is called, Com­mand Per­for­mance.  At the time, it was the least harm­ful train­ing method I could find.  While more gen­tle cor­rec­tions were used than those I saw with the K-9 trainer, they were still cor­rec­tions.  The the­ory was, if the dog did not actu­ally see you cor­rect­ing him it wouldn’t really be a cor­rec­tion.  Much care is taken with this sys­tem to try and avoid the dog see­ing the trainer cor­rect him.  (Unfor­tu­nately, this is not true and the dog is cer­tainly aware who is cor­rect­ing him.)   As with many dif­fer­ent types of pro­grams from diet­ing to sports train­ing, if reli­giously adhered to,  Com­mand Per­for­mance worked.  It took quite awhile but even­tu­ally Mur­doch was walk­ing with me, off leash, across busy streets.  The prob­lem was, I could see that Mur­doch was stressed when he knew we were about to start a train­ing ses­sion.  He would endure the train­ing but he didn’t like it.  I kept look­ing for a bet­ter train­ing technique.

Some years later, we adopted a new Beaglish dog, Brid­get, that def­i­nitely needed train­ing and I signed up at the local Pets­Mart.  I hap­pened to meet a great trainer who intro­duced me to clicker train­ing.  Marty was a trainer who was prop­erly trained in clicker train­ing.  That is cer­tainly not true of many of the train­ers in large pet sup­ply stores.  (Remem­ber, just because some­one is walk­ing around with a clicker and a treat bag, that does not make them a clicker trainer.  They are often no more a clicker train­ers than some­one walk­ing around with a spat­ula in a fast food restau­rant that might call him or her­self a chef.)

After expe­ri­enc­ing how well this method worked with Brid­get I read more about clicker train­ing.  I learned that true clicker train­ing is actu­ally oper­ant con­di­tion­ing devel­oped by the B.F. Skin­ner, Ph.D., at Har­vard dur­ing the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury.  I also learned from Karen Pryor (the woman who is pri­mar­ily respon­si­ble for intro­duc­ing clicker train­ing to the dog train­ing world) that is is the same train­ing used to train dol­phins and whales at places like Sea World and the Shedd Aquar­ium.  It is the process of mark­ing the behav­ior being sought and then imme­di­ately reward­ing that behav­ior. I had stum­bled on an effec­tive train­ing method that uses absolutely no cor­rec­tions — no prong col­lars, no shock col­lars, no leash pop­ping and no yelling.  After doing some addi­tional research, I also learned that oper­ant con­di­tion­ing (clicker train­ing) is con­sid­ered by many sci­en­tists to be the most effec­tive train­ing method for any type of ani­mal.  Not only does this train­ing work, but the sub­jects can’t wait to begin a train­ing ses­sion.  Instead of stress in the antic­i­pa­tion of a train­ing ses­sion, the sub­jects can not wait to begin.  It is their oppor­tu­nity to fool you into giv­ing them treats just for doing some­thing silly like sit­ting, lying down, rolling over or most ridicu­lously, just sit­ting in one spot when the han­dler says, “stay.”

It is very excit­ing to be able to encour­age a dog to vol­un­tar­ily exhibit a behav­ior that you are seek­ing.  Not only do the dogs vol­un­tar­ily “throw” these behav­ior, they are anx­ious to per­form.  More impor­tantly, you become much closer to your dog.  You start watch­ing your dog almost as closely as he or she watches you.  A com­mu­ni­ca­tion devel­ops that you never imag­ined and your dog becomes your train­ing part­ner instead of a servant.

Remem­ber, give clicker train­ing a try, it can’t hurt.