Clicker Charge

Clicker Charge

Transcript

00:00Hey guys, I'm Jen Green. This is Stryker. We're from Tailwaggers Academy and we're here for the

00:05John DiBella dog walk at Ask the Trainer booth. So one question that I get asked a lot is what is a

00:13clicker and how do I use it for training? This is a clicker. This is actually a marker. So there's a

00:20couple different types of clicker. This is a box clicker. I love the box clickers, especially for

00:24outside. It's a little bit louder. There's also something called a button clicker. It's a little

00:31bit softer noise, which is good for dogs who possibly may not like this loud noise of a clicker.

00:39So there's a couple options out there for you. It's not a remote control. So we can't do that to

00:46our dogs because we don't want to scare them. Clicker is just to mark a behavior, almost like

00:52old school good boy, good girl when we're training. Now I still want you to tell your dogs that they're

00:57good boys and good girls, but during training let's use things that our dogs don't hear all the time.

01:04So if you decide to use a verbal marker like the word yes, that's awesome. If you want to use a clicker,

01:11you can use a clicker. And I'm going to show you how you can charge up the word yes

01:15and charge up the clicker. Striker, take a break. The first part of charging up your word or your

01:23clicker is going to be click and treat. We're going to do this, usually we'll do it about six or seven

01:31times. You can do it a little bit more if you need to. This is just associating this noise means food

01:38right now. Okay. Take a break. Take a break for striker means just get up. We're going to start

01:45all over again. Take a break, bubs. I'm going to ask him to sit. He knows the word sit. As soon as his

01:53bum hit the floor, he got that reward. He got the clicker, which is his paycheck. The food is the money.

01:59The clicker always comes before the food. Okay. Take a break. Sit. Take a break. Sit. Good job, buddy.

02:11So I'm still giving him verbal praise because I like to. He loves to hear it. But the clicker is only to mark

02:17the behavior that you asked for. Okay. So one of the things I want you to keep in mind, it's not a forever tool.

02:24It's just to train your dog a behavior and then the clicker was going to go away. We don't want to

02:31treat our dogs forever. We can treat them once in a while after they've learned the behavior. But this

02:36is mainly used just to teach your dog, what's my expectation? Is your dog not listening or do they

02:44understand or not understand what your expectations are? The expectations are starting, when are you

02:51marking that good behavior? All right, guys, let's get started with the clicker.