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Employing clicker training for dogs is one of the most effective training methods going today. It's popularity not only stems from the fact that it's not painful to the dog, but in the fact that it's powerfully effective. Behavioral psychology is where it got it's beginning, which adheres to the premise of rewarding behavior that's good. This method of training involves 'marking' the good behavior with a click from the clicker, enabling the dog to know it's done something good and will receive a treat.

This positive re-enforcement and clicking helps to form a very powerful method of training that the dog understands even better than vocal commands. And we're all glad about doing away with the old methods of 'shocking' and hurting the animals to teach them something. Dogs by nature want to please their owners, but it's in the communication that understanding gets lost. The clicker method really helps your dog to understand what's going on.

The term used by researchers for this method of training, is 'Operant Conditioning'. It basically means that the dog intentionally does something so as to bring about the desired ending. Dogs tend to associate people, places, and events or objects with a pleasurable or un-pleasurable grading system. So the more they're associated with an event in a pleasurable sense, then the more they associate that event in a favorable light. It's a type of conditioning.

Once the dog learns that it gets a reward for certain behavior, then it will repeat the good behavior over and over again. This conditioning is how the dog is trained. The 'operant' conditioning will produce behavior that's purposeful, while the classic type of conditioning produces behavior that's habitual. Together they form a powerful type of training.

There's a good reason for using the sound of a clicker instead of just giving the dog voice commands. It's really quite simple when you think about it. They don't associate the sound of the clicker with anything else, other than that if they do a certain thing they'll receive a reward. They don't hear the clicker sound any other times, so they associate it with reward time. And the clicker sound is the same every time, whereas we humans can say the same word with different inflection and sound.

This popular method of training dogs has also been employed to train many other types of animal. One of the first animals trained with this method is the Dolphin. They needed a way to train the Dolphin without any physical force, because, how are you going to force a Dolphin to do something? After seeing it's effectiveness, it has since been used on cats, rabbits, birds, leopards, and many many other animals.

When using the clicker method, the clicking needs to take place 'during' the wanted behavior. It's important that you don't wait until the act is done before clicking. Click and give a treat to begin the behavior, and click to the end, and give another treat. When you have the dog in an everyday setting, watch to see what it does, and when it does anything you like give it a click and a treat. If you want to emphasize and create more encouragement for a certain behavior, increase the amount of the treat.

Using clicker training for dogs can enable you to communicate with your dog in a positive way that you weren't able to do before. By rewarding good behavior after a performed behavior done on cue, you'll find that your dog enjoys displaying this good behavior. Punishing bad behavior can sometimes produce even more bad behavior, even though it may curb the selected bad behavior to a point. Positive re-enforcement in the proper way is the best approach for getting your dog to perform in a positive manner.

Author's Resource:

Mike Morris writes about this and other dog training issues at trainingdogshelp.com Find more about clicker training for dogs here

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