Basic Clicker Training in 6 Steps

1. Charging the clicker
2. Getting the behaviour
3. Marking the behaviour
4. Reinforcing the behaviour
5. Adding the cue/phase out the clicker
6. Adding praise/phase out the treats

1. Charging the clicker is classical conditioning, like Pavlov’s bell, and his drooling dogs. You are going to take a clicker and pair it with a food reward Primary Reinforcer until the click itself gets your dog all happy.

Once your dog catches on to this type of training the presence of a clicker will be enough to get him excited and in “training mode.” To charge the clicker go to a quiet room with your dog and have a bowl of really tasty human food such as hot dog, chicken, liver, etc. cut up into very small treat size pieces. (Treats are best soft, crunchy ones take too long to eat).

Click your clicker once and then treat (click and treat, or the short version C/T) that’s all, then C/T again. At this point you are just charging the clicker so you are not asking for a behaviour (such as sit) here at all. What you are doing is creating a positive association between the sound of the clicker and a primary reinforcer; food. Try not to C/T while your dog is doing the same thing like sitting and watching you, so keep changing your position slightly and move around a little.

Take your time with charging the clicker, on day one aim for 5 sessions, and at each session just C/T 10 times. Before long you will notice that when your dog hears the click sound he actually starts to look for his treat. When this happens you are ready to move on to the next step.

What do I do if I am working with a fearful, shy, or sound sensitive dog?

You can do as above, but muffle the sound of the clicker but putting it in your pocket, or covering it with tape to mute the tone slightly. You can also stand a little distance from your dog and C/T by throwing the treat on the floor near to your dog. If your dog is food motivated then he will soon associate the sound of the clicker as being a good thing. Work at your dog’s pace, and be patient, you may need to do several days of 5 sessions each day, but again, as soon as your dog visibly looks for his treat on hearing the click, but is not startled or anxious, you can progress to the next step.

2. Getting the behaviour.  There are three main ways of getting behaviours, luring, capturing, and shaping. I have covered these in detail in a previous post, so you can go here to read and then return to this post.

3. Marking the behaviour. The fundamental difference between clicker training and other reward-based training is that you can effectively communicate with your dog, let him know exactly which behaviour earned him a reward. The sound of the click marks the exact desired behaviour as it occurs. This is why your timing is very important, you don’t want to click too soon or too late, just like taking action shots in sports photography, you want to capture the precise moment of the behaviour.

A great way to hone your timing is to have a friend drop a ball to the floor, the precise moment the ball touches the floor, you click. Have your friend score you for timing from zero to two, with zero being too soon, and one being exact, and two being too late. Repeat until you get ten consecutive one’s. Another fun way to practise is to have your friend sit on a chair, as soon as his/her bottom touches the seat of the chair, you click, again have your friend score you.

4. Reinforcing the behaviour. When your dog offers a behaviour, and the behaviour is then reinforced with something that your dog wants, he is more likely to repeat the behaviour in the future.

Your dog’s learning is really about the increased probability of a behaviour based on reinforcement which has taken place in the past, so that the antecedents of the new behaviour include the consequences of previous behaviour.

Why use food?

Food is a primary reinforcer; something that your dog is born needing. When clicker training a new behaviour you will be using a high rate of reinforcement. Food in the form of small treats enable you to click “mark the behaviour”, and then treat “reinforce the behaviour”, at a high rate. Your dog will be motivated to repeat the new behaviour you are training many times, as he is quite happy working for food, his pay cheque.

Food is not however the only reinforcer you can use, but in the early steps of clicker training it is the most practical. Anything your dog will work for can be used as a reinforcer, a few examples: a quick game of tug, a throw of a ball, freedom to “go play”, attention and petting.

5. Adding the cue/phase out the clicker. In clicker training, you add the cue after your dog is offering the behaviour frequently, not while your dog is learning it. Why?

When you are teaching your dog a new behaviour, you want him to concentrate on the behaviour. At this step, adding a cue would be meaningless, just another bit of “noise” to sort through. Make learning something new easy for your dog by minimizing distractions, including meaningless cue words. You want the cue to be associated with the final form of the behaviour, and for the behaviour to be offered frequently. If you add the cue in the early stages you run the risk of having an unfinished version of the behaviour and/or your dog could get confused and associate the cue with a different behaviour. So first get the behaviour you want in the form you want and then add the cue, for simple behaviours this can happen in a day.

As a general rule you want your dog offering the behaviour to a frequency of at least 80% before adding the cue, so you see it doesn’t have to be perfect

Phase out the clicker

Let’s say you have a cute puppy and you are going to teach him to sit. On day one you have 3 training sessions of five minutes each, and during each session you are able to “mark the behaviour” with a “click”, then “reinforce” your puppy with a “treat”, for getting the sit behaviour right 8 times out of 10. At the end of day one you would add the verbal cue “sit” during the last session.

On day two you have 3 training sessions of five minutes each, and during each session you are able to give the cue “sit” mark the behaviour with a click, and then reinforce your puppy with a treat, for offering the sit behaviour 8 times out of 10 during each session.

You then repeat this procedure in many different places building distractions, for example: outside your home, a quiet street, a busier street, near traffic, quiet park, busier park, supermarket car park etc. When you reach 80% frequency in all these places you can start to phase out the click

6. Adding praise/phase out the treats. As you start to phase out the click you can add praise, petting, etc. Try to make this as seamless as possible for your dog. You also want to start phasing out the treats, so you will start to vary your schedule of reinforcement. This is the last step in clicker training and is complex so I will cover this in a different post

I don’t advise phasing out treats completely, the best behaviours should still earn treats as rewards. However once your dog is reliable or fluent in an behaviour then food treats are not the only reward that your dog will happily work for.

Related posts:

Dog training in 5 steps

Getting Behaviours