Most people that I ask about CLICKER training have absolutely no idea about the theory behind the training, they simply think that they are going to point a CLICKER at their dogs and they will be trained. Unfortunately this is not the case. The truth is that the CLICKER method actually takes longer than other methods since you are looking for perfection whilst keeping the dog happy, keen and enthusiastic and developing attitude as you go. As your training progresses, you will hear talk about dogs in drive. This is simply the art of developing the want in the dog to be doing, at all times.

Anybody who comes to watch one of my classes wonders at how any of the dogs in it can learn but they do. I try to generate a relaxed atmosphere for the handlers and never ask them to do anything I myself can’t do with at least one of my dogs. I use my dogs to demonstrate to new people and for any new exercises that I want you to teach to your dogs.

The exercises are simple to start with to build the dogs confidence and frequent repetition is the name of the game.

Maybe the most important thing for you to remember is that until your dog is doing the exercise you are currently teaching, you give no commands. This method works best if you encourage the dog to do the exercise, then once you can reliably predict that he will do it 99% of the time, you put the exercise on cue. This is common sense really as some one could shout at you to do something as much as they liked but if you truly didn’t understand what they meant you would have little chance of doing it, let alone getting it right. Clicker training is brilliant for teaching part exercises, in other words it does no harm to click and treat if the dog makes an effort at an exercise but doesn’t complete it or get it totally right.

Ø ALWAYS HAVE REAL FOOD TREATS AS REWARDS. SOFT ONES THAT WILL NOT TAKE MUCH CHEWING. THESE SHOULD BE TAILORED TO SUIT THE SIZE OF YOUR DOG.

Ø ALWAYS CLICK FIRST THEN GIVE THE TREAT. IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE INSTANTANEOUS BUT ONCE YOU’VE CLICKED YOU MUST BE READY TO GIVE THE TREAT.

Ø REMEMBER THE CLICK SIGNALS THE END OF THE EXERCISE AND SHOULD NOT BE USED TO SUPPLY ENCOURAGEMENT.

Ø HAVE FUN. EXPERIMENT AND TEACH TRICKS. DOGS LOVE A CHANCE TO SHOW OFF THEIR TALENTS.

This is generally the first exercise covered for all new comers and old timers alike as it is a simple warm up game for the dog to play. To start with you will need a handful of tasty treats and your CLICKER. Then you position yourself sitting on the edge of a chair with your legs stretched out as far as you comfortably can but keeping your feet flat on the floor. Using the treats lure your dog to come and stand/sit between your feet. If they don’t sit to start with it doesn’t matter, the sit will come as they become more confident. The moment they stand/sit between your feet (the moment they reach their limit or the moment their bottom hits the floor)CLICK and TREAT. Repeat this several times. Once you can predict that when he see’s you sitting on the edge of the chair with a treat offered he will give you the required behaviour, you can start to put it on cue. For recall I would simply use the dogs name. Obviously there is a mile of difference to the dog from you sitting in a chair to you standing up expecting the finished exercise, so there are many stage’s to go through before the dog will understand that both are basically the same exercise.

After sitting on the chair with your feet stretched out and flat on the floor you would slowly, an inch at a time move your feet in towards your body until you reach the point when they are directly beneath your knees.

Then you would stretch your feet out again but hold your knee’s together. Again, slowly you would bring your feet back until they were under your knees. This gives the dog the same feeling for the present when you are standing upright.

Then you would at last stand up, (You don’t straighten right away as there are several stage’s still to go through) you lean against a wall with your feet stretched out so that you present the same picture to the dog as when you first began the exercise. At this stage and for as long as it takes the dog to understand that it is in fact the same exercise that he’s been doing all along.

Then, once the dog is doing this stage, you would begin slowly to bring your feet back until you were standing almost upright.

It can take as little as a couple of weeks to perfect the whole lot but it is more usual for it to take anything up to a year and even then you may need frequent reminders for the dog.

Another good practice of this exercise is when sitting in the chair take even the young puppy off the lead and throw a piece of food across the floor, the dog will hopefully run out to find the food. It is a good idea the make this pieces of food larger than normal treats so they can be easily seen. Once the dog has eaten the food and as long as there is nothing to distract him, he will turn and see you sitting in your present position and recognising it from earlier training sessions, will come and sit between your feet. Repeat many times in one session.

I once overheard a reporter asking questions of my instructor and roared with laughter when he asked “Is it heelwork or hellwork?” The choice of which you wish to teach is up to you but I would prefer heelwork!

What is required to teach a dog to do attractive heelwork is the dog’s full understanding of what is required and his want (or desire) to do it. A lot of instructors will tell you when introducing heelwork that it is the dog giving you his attention and if he doesn’t give it willingly check the lead and praise him. This I consider Hellwork.

I like to think of this exercise as a game of tag. Like any game, the important part of playing the game is learning the rules. The rules for heelwork are:

v SHOWING THE DOG WHERE YOU WANT HIM

v HAND TOUCHING

v TREAT CHASING

v PUPPY HEELING

v TAG

1. Stand with your left leg in front of your right and using a treat lure the dog around in an arc on your left side, right behind your left side and lure him in to a stand at heel. CLICK AND TREAT. This part is not a race but merely feeding information to the dog. As the dog’s confidence grows you can become more picky and only accept the ones when the dogs foot is touching your left foot. Try to insure that the dog stands square on to you, not poking his bottom out or in.

2. Hand touching is a nice thing to teach the dog on wet days when you don’t feel like going out. Sit in a chair and hold out your left hand, dogs being nosy will often sniff it straight away, CLICK AND TREAT. Repeat this for several lessons then hold out the right hand, when the dog sniffs this hand tell him “Wrong” and immediately offer the left hand, Click and treat as soon as he touches this hand. The idea of this game is to have the dog so tuned in to your left hand that you would probably have to beat him off with a stick to stop him touching it or eventually looking to it for guidance.

3. Treat chasing. Dogs seem to love this game as it gives them a opportunity to move quickly. Basically, there are not may people who can move as fast as Linford Christie can run but most people’s hand and arms can move as fast as he runs. So by holding a treat in your left hand you can, slowly at first, teach your dog to follow your hand wherever to goes. This helps to loosen the dog up, it also gives the dog a totally separate introduction to the turns you will need for later heelwork. Teach him to circle one way and then the other. Turn yourself around in a circle etc., all with the dog following the treat in your hand.

4. PUPPY HEELING is again feeding information to the dog that around your left leg is the best place in the world for him to be. Dangling a treat down your left side move very slowly with much gooey chat as you like so that he follows the treat, after 2 or 3 steps CLICK AND GIVE THE TREAT. Slowly build up the distance that you move.

5. Finally TAG. This is where all the previous work should show and this is a real game of tag. You move briskly away from the dog so that he has to move fast to catch up and as soon as he catches up, you CLICK AND TREAT. It actually works like kids playing in a playground. One chases the other and when the first one tags the other there is an explosion of laughter and the other one becomes the chaser. I’ll now put this into the training perspective. You move away briskly, dog moves fast to catch up, as soon as you are caught you explode with a loud “YES or GOOD” and give the dog the CLICK AND TREAT. Then it all begins again. With some dogs this works better if you have a game with a toy instead of giving a treat. This is the part that teaches heelwork and not hellwork.

After a good time of repeating the above and your dog has a good idea of what is required you can begin teaching on the spot turns. This is done in the same way that you initially taught the dog where the heel position is.

Take a treat and show the dog that you have a treat and indicate the heel position but help him round if necessary. Once he is standing at heel gently raise your toe slightly and swivel to the right or left just a little and help the dog to reposition himself. Practice both sides until the dog readily repositions with no help from you. Don’t forget to regularly CLICK & TREAT while doing this exercise.

Another part of teaching heelwork is done as part of your game of tag. After repeating your tag game , you will probably find that the dog is now working in a lovely position and enjoying the idea of following you about. At this stage it is a good idea to put in an immediate stop. I don’t mean for you to just stop, I mean for you to stop so suddenly as if you were going to fall over a cliff if you progressed a centimetre further. This will probably totally catch the dog out and he will end up a mile ahead of you. If you have practised and he understands “wrong”, tell him wrong and help him to reposition. As soon as he is back in the heel position, CLICK AND TREAT.

MOVEMENT for heelwork using hand touching. This part of the exercise is so often overlooked as the handler allows the dog to find its own way of moving. Unfortunately the way they move is often choppy or jumpy, and nagging is what keeps the dog in position. Many handlers/trainers don’t realise that it is an easy thing to teach better movement to the dog but it must be taken out of the heelwork position. You must have a fairly good hand touch to begin with or you will need to carry food, which you should do away with as soon as you can.

Stretch your arm out to the side of your body (left side of course) and do a couple of click and treats for the dog touching your hand while it is away from you. Then begin moving at a slow pace in a right handed circle, click and treat as soon as the dog touches the out stretched left hand while moving. Repeat this several times and possibly for a few sessions. Then you need to raise your standards and instead of just looking for a hand touch you are now looking for a maintained hand touch while moving a short distance around the right handed circle, goals should be achievable for the dogs and the reward should come after you have done no more than half a dozen steps. Carry on building up like this until you can complete as many circles as you like and the dog remains in position.

Lastly, teaching a straight sit a heel. People get into such trouble trying to get the dog in straight beside them but using this method the dog knows firstly where he should be when you mention the word ‘heel/ close’ so half your job is already done. To finish it off and insure the dog can make no mistake you position yourself against a wall, with only enough space between your left foot and the wall for your dog’s bottom. Lure the dog around and up beside you, then raise the treat above the dogs head to lure him into a sit position. Click and treat as soon as the dog’s bottom hits the floor.

For years trainers have done variations on one of two methods of teaching this EXERCISE. First is opening the dog’s mouth, with varying amounts of pressure from the handler and placing the dumbbell in its mouth. Or just throwing it and hoping. Having tried both methods on previous dogs I’ve owned I now much prefer the one I currently use as it feeds information to the dog, so that it totally understands the rules of the game and places the dog under no pressure.

Some dogs rush through the whole procedure and have a good understanding of the exercise in no time; others don’t grasp the idea until the handler has fed in some information first. The method here I will describe from the early teaching steps onwards, but if your dog starts half way through it doesn’t matter.

For a dog that has never seen a dumbbell or for any reason doesn’t like it, this method will prove helpful. Hold the dumbbell slightly out to the side of the dog’s head and CLICK AND TREAT for him merely looking in its direction. Change the position of the dumbbell so that the dog will look at it wherever you hold it. This should be the right, the left, up in the air, down towards the floor.

Next, when the dog begins to mouth the dumbbell, place it on the floor and wait. Eventually when the dog gets bored he may voluntarily look at the dumbbell or he may even just fall over it whilst grubbing around trying to think of something else to do or looking for dropped treats. Whichever occurs, CLICK AND TREAT. What will probably develop from here is that the dog will begin to simply touch the dumbbell with his nose. Great, work at getting repetitive touches for varying number of clicks. So if he is touching once no longer click for that but expect two touches for one click, then back to one and then ask for three and so no until the click is with-held altogether and the dog becomes frustrated and finally opens his mouth around the bell. CLICK AND GIVE A HANDFUL OF TREATS. This is called giving extras for excellence and helps see the dog through the dry times when treats are not so forthcoming. You will then probably reach the stage when the dog begins to make the connection with him getting the treat as something to do with the dumbbell, this is usually indicated by the dog looking from handler to dumbbell in a questioning manner. Quite suddenly you will find the dog eagerly mouthing the dumbbell, if not attempting to pick it up. The first time he does pick up be ready and give a handful of treats and much praise. You need to mark the first attempt so as to preserve it for all time.

Now that the dog is picking up the dumbbell you can begin to put two exercises together, the dumbbell pick up can now be joined in with the present exercise you have already done.

An advanced exercise normally only needed when the dog is in class ‘c’ but it is fun to teach and could have loads of uses outside the obedience ring. For the obedience class we don’t want the dog making any forward movement and so we only teach the walk back stand initially. To do this with a treat in your hand you take your hand under the dogs chin, the idea is that the dog will step backwards in an effort to get to the treat. As soon as you see even one foot moving backwards you click and treat. I suggest you hold the treat in your right hand as you have already done some work on the dog not touching the right hand, it may become confused if you use the left. After working on this of a while you are likely to see the dog trying to move back on it’s own before you get the treat under its chin, click and treat. At this stage you can begin lure training. Lure the dog forward with the treat in your right hand if it comes forward remove the treat and tell him wrong. It may take several attempts but you will probably find the dog will eventually grasp the idea and take a small step backwards, click and treat. With practise it should be possible to get the dog to move very nearly the whole length of a hall backwards and visibly dig its feet in not to come forward.

Once you have perfected the walk back stand you can begin teaching the canter leaver down. This is where the dog moves backward into the down without moving his feet forward at all. It looks incredibly neat when performed correctly and even though it may take some time to teach it is worth persisting with. Get the dog moving backwards into his stand a few times, once he is happy doing this follow in to him and as he’s going back bring a treat down to the floor somewhere between his front legs. It is impossible for me to tell you where the treat should be as it can be different for every dog, you will need to use your own judgement for your dog.

If he doesn’t canter leaver just ignore it and try again. Click and treat any effort.

Sit is manufactured from any position by luring the dog with a treat above its head.

Again an advanced exercise but brilliant fun for the dogs and for you but one word of warning don’t teach this at the same time as retrieve as this can confuse the dog, as in this exercise you are teaching the dog to target a marker and it is easy for the dog to become muddled between the dumbbell and marker.

You need a very clear marker (a road bollard is fine, and there are so many of them they won’t miss one). Pick the marker up and place it on the floor right in front of you with your dog wandering around. Dogs by nature are nosy and your dog will probably investigate this strange object, click and treat. A lot of dogs at this stage will now ignore the marker and stare at you expecting you to give them a clue as to what it was they did that got them a treat but if your patient and don’t panic with time the dog will probably fall over the marker again, click and treat. By now you have one confused dog but be assured the best way now to progress is to have patience and just wait. If your dog shows no sign of going near the marker, because he’s exploring the hall or simply staring at you, it may be necessary to bring his attention back to the marker by tapping it until he touches it, click and treat.

As soon as your dog is confident and repetitively touching the marker you can take a step away. Hopefully the dog will now start to turn and touch the marker, if he does, take another step, then another, until you’re at the full distance your training area will allow.

You can play around with the dog when he is confident at going away. You can try for multiple touches before he comes back to you but the multiples must be practised up close to the marker before you try it at a distance. Eventually you can tell him down as he touches the marker but don’t do this more then once in a session as it can slow the dog down considerably at what you want at all costs is the speed.

SIT is simply a matter of luring the dog where you want it, beside you into the sit. DOWN though I have seen people employ some dreadful methods over the years, some are even potentially injurious to the dogs. So I will describe here the way I teach the dog to lay down and which becomes a great game for the dog once they understand it. Unfortunately for you it means you getting down onto the floor first. Sit on the floor propped against the wall for your comfort. Raise your knees to form a tunnel (the height will vary depending weather your dog is a tiny Dachshund puppy or a large St Bernard) using a treat lure the dog under the tunnel formed by your raised knees. If the tunnel is the right height for him your dog will be forced to lay down to reach the treat. With this exercise I put a command of down in right from the beginning and as the dog lays down. Some long-bodied dogs may need a gentle hand on their backend to insure a complete down, but always click and treat at the moment he does go down. To progress from this stage you can kneel down and stretch out one leg and if the previous stage has been repeated enough the dog will probably lay under the leg.

Now the dog will probably be ready for the food lure down, take a treat and take it down to the floor, if you’ve done enough lure under your leg the dog will lay down.

Once he has perfected this you can introduce the right wrong game which speeds the down up.

Show the dog you have a treat and tell him ‘down’ if he doesn’t do it tell him ‘wrong’ and withhold the click and treat for a while and repeat the command but be ready to help him this time if he doesn’t succeed. Click and treat as soon as he’s down. Soon the dog will see you standing in a certain way and begin laying down, in fact will probably become a pain laying down all over the place when you don’t want him to. Simply ignore the ones you don’t command and this behaviour will soon stop.

As for the stays I like to teach a solid stay up close with excitement. Place the dog into position stand beside him and gently clap your hands for a couple of seconds. If he moves tell him ‘wrong’ and place him back and try again. I wouldn’t think of leaving a dog who cannot stay with you beside him even when you are clapping, cheering and jumping up and down. This makes very steady stays, in any position. You know you’ve cracked it when you can jump up and down, clap and cheer and the dog looks at you as if to say ‘do you have to be so stupid’.

Teaching scent this way the dog does not even have to retrieve, it can even be done with a baby puppy. You need two clothes one with your scent on it and one heavily decoyed (preferably by someone the dog doesn’t know). Put both clothes on the floor about 2 foot or more apart and put one of your feet on each cloth. Let the puppy or dog examine the clothes trying to draw his attention to the decoy first, as he sniffs it tell him ‘wrong’ immediately draw his attention to the other cloth (the correct one) and click and treat as he sniffs it. If he tries tugging it release your foot and let him have it, then swap it for a treat.

One word of warning about scent clothes it is very easy for them to become contaminated with other scents. Try to get other people to wash your scent clothes and once dry, seal them in an air tight container. Each person wishing to do scent should have their own scent clothes. I think this is why a lot of clubs don’t bother with teaching scent (I don’t do it very often in my club for this reason).

Above are just guide lines and should be adapted to suit individual dogs. The most important thing is enjoy your dogs. Seize opportunities, if your dog offers you something you may need at later stage or something you really like, mark it with a click and treat.

Above all have fun, if you make a mistake and click and treat at the wrong time, who cares? Certainly not the dog.

Copyright © 2002, Rose Barham. All rights reserved.

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