The Education of Allie: The Miraculous World of Clicker Training

So I hadn't really planned on writing anything else today since I didn't really expect much out of our first little training session, but y'all this dog is full of surprises.

I realized now since I've talked about it several times, that some of you may not actually know what a "clicker" is because before getting Allie, the only clicker I'd ever heard of was a TV remote.
This is a clicker:

It's basically just a little plastic box with a piece of metal inside it that clicks when it's pressed. I've read a lot about clicker training and I like that it's a non-intimidating method of getting the results you want through reinforcing the behavior you want the dog (or pretty much any other pet, I've seen some people even use these with horses) to do. When starting clicker training, the first step is to "load the clicker" which definitely kind of threw me off with the name, when I hear that you have to "load" something, I'm thinking put something inside it, but that's not actually what this means. "Loading the clicker" basically means getting the dog used to the sound the clicker makes and getting them to understand that something positive follows hearing that sound. So to load the clicker you just click and treat without having the dog do anything. Just click and then give the dog a treat, most things I read said to do this about 10-20 times, then let the dog get interested in something else and then click again. If they look at you or come over to you, that means they've got it, then you can give them a treat and can actually start using the clicker to train them.

The idea behind clicker training is to help your pet to enjoy learning new things, whether it's obedience type skills or just tricks to show off for friends, because rather than punishing your dog for doing something you didn't want them to do, you're rewarding them for doing what you did want them to do. This is also supposed to make the dog want to listen to you because they do whatever it is you're wanting them to do, you're going to reward them. If they do the behavior you tell them to do, you click as soon as they do it and give them a treat, if they don't do what you told them to do, you simply put them back in the position you wanted them in and they don't get a treat that time. It doesn't take them too long to figure out that they only get a treat if they do whatever it is you're asking them to do.

The first thing (and supposedly the easiest) I wanted to train, was "stay". I read something that I'd never thought of, but makes a lot of sense. This article mentioned how most of us train our dog to sit or lay down, and teach a "stay" cue separately, but that it not only can be confusing to the dog, it's also kind of unnecessary. This article suggested teaching "stay" as a part of "sit" or "lay down", meaning to teach the dog to sit or lay down until you tell them to get up. Wow, why had I never thought of that before? Because when you think about it, that has to be pretty confusing for a dog, "if stay means to stay sitting until I'm told to move, then what do they mean when they tell me to sit?" I mean technically if you tell your dog to sit (meaning for them to stay seated) even if they only sit for 2 seconds, they did do what you told them to do.

The main difficulty I've had with finding training videos online is the ones that make the most sense typically use dogs that are already very well trained so already know how to do everything their owner is trying to demonstrate. I mean come on, having your dog sit perfectly still while you toss an entire package of weenies around your backyard, yeah that's something my dog will be able to do after a single training session, give me a break. But I finally managed to find a really decent step-by-step article on how to teach a "stay". So using steps from that, plus adding in a "release cue" (letting your dog know they can get up) which I learned from another video, here's how the session went.

I started off like the article said, had Allie sit right in front of me, waited 2 seconds, clicked and gave her a treat since she didn't move. I then repeated this (adding one second each time) until I could count to 15 without her trying to get up. Then it was time to start adding distance. I told her to sit, took a step backwards, counted to 10, clicked and gave her a treat. I repeated this taking one more step backwards every time until I could stand 10 steps away from her (per the directions) for 10 seconds without her trying to get up. Then I decided to make it even more interesting and had her sit and walked out of the room, first where she could still see me, but then around corners where she couldn't see where I was, and would count to 15 and she still stayed put.

Now some people are really picky and don't want their dog to move at all, not even shift position, but I don't really care. There were a couple times if I was gone for a while, she'd lay down and watch for me, that doesn't bother me at all, as long as she's in the same spot I left her, I couldn't really care less whether she's sitting or laying down.

I then decided to make it even more interesting. I picked up one of her toys and stood a few steps in front of her. I started out just holding the toy, didn't faze her, she got a click and a treat. Then I started kind of tossing the toy in the air and catching it, didn't faze her, she got another click and treat. Then I laid the toy down at my feet (expecting she'd at least scoot forward to try to get to it), didn't faze her at all, yet another click and treat. Then for the ultimate test, I tossed the toy across the room like I do when we play fetch, didn't even flinch. I was ecstatic.

We've still got a lot to work on, but this first training session was definitely a great confidence builder for both of us. In fact, I filmed our second training session as a semi-abbreviated version of what we went over earlier. I posted it to my YouTube channel, and will include the link here if anyone would like to see her progress.

Allie's Second Training Session

To the two or three of you that keep up with this, let me know if y'all would be interested in more videos and I'll see what I can do. This one wasn't really planned, Mama wanted to see what all she was doing so I videoed our abbreviated run-through to show her. I posted it to my YouTube channel simply because it was too long to send her on Facebook so figured I could just put it on YouTube and send her the link. But if y'all are interested, maybe I can actually learn how to YouTube and make future videos a little fancier. Also, I noticed that for some reason the link's not actually visible on the black background, but if you move your cursor over it you can see it.

As always, until next time, stay awesome.