# Clickers without education



## TeamPoodle (Aug 10, 2015)

Riley and I went to a minor league baseball game today where you could bring your dog sponsored in part by the emergency vet in our town (and Fromm foods, since we're in Wisconsin). The emergency vet gave out lots of awesome goodies, like a poop bag carrier, emergency leash, bandanas, and... clickers. I'm ALL for clicker training, but I thought it was such a weird thing to hand out to people who have never used a clicker (and they didn't come with directions either). I ended up moving spots at the game because I found the guy behind me so irritating. When his dog was misbehaving, he would click the clicker 3-4 times to try to get his dog's attention. "Missy, no. Missy, Missy (click-click-click) Missy (click-click-click), Missy, I said no (click-click-click-click)" 

On the one hand, the clicker won't harm the dog, but I can't see what he thought he was accomplishing. Perhaps he thought the clicker was a sound to get your dog's attention? That was CLEARLY not working in his favor.


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## Axeldog (Aug 29, 2014)

I agree! That is a little bit of a weird thing to just hand out as a free gift. 

At least Missy didnt run away  Axel was afraid of the clicker at first, and I had to work to get him over his fear of the clicker before I was able to employ it in training. 

Maybe there were at least a few people in the crowd that know how to use one and appreciated getting an extra. (you can never have enough clickers!)


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## Caddy (Nov 23, 2014)

I don't think it's a strange thing to handout, what I do find strange is that the guy behind you didn't know how to use it.


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## fjm (Jun 4, 2010)

Sounds as if he thought it was some kind of remote control - click, and the dog's behaviour is magically improved!


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## Click-N-Treat (Nov 9, 2015)

People do think it is a remote control! I see people in pet stores clicking away. I agree, without instructions a clicker is useless.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Oh dear. I think there should have been directions on how to use it given with the clickers. The guy behind you will never be able to use it properly now because he poisoned it.

I use a verbal marker rather than a clicker because I never liked juggling all of the stuff I have to handle with a novice dog (leash, treats, plus clicker). Since I have helped my mom with much of her training of her dog she also doesn't use a clicker. I had someone who uses a clicker at my novice class a few months ago. We were doing sits and downs and the person was clicking every few seconds during the sit and also during the down. What was she marking? The dog showed no signs of breaking the stay. My mom's dog didn't mind so much during the sit but since he was in a phase of not wanting to down anyway, every click made him stand up. I asked the other person to cool it with the clicking and everybody stayed down.

There are lots of tools available to use for training. They all have advantages and disadvantages, but none works well if the trainer/handler doesn't understand how to use them.


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## Tiny Poodles (Jun 20, 2013)

lily cd re said:


> Oh dear. I think there should have been directions on how to use it given with the clickers. The guy behind you will never be able to use it properly now because he poisoned it.
> 
> I use a verbal marker rather than a clicker because I never liked juggling all of the stuff I have to handle with a novice dog (leash, treats, plus clicker). Since I have helped my mom with much of her training of her dog she also doesn't use a clicker. I had someone who uses a clicker at my novice class a few months ago. We were doing sits and downs and the person was clicking every few seconds during the sit and also during the down. What was she marking? The dog showed no signs of breaking the stay. My mom's dog didn't mind so much during the sit but since he was in a phase of not wanting to down anyway, every click made him stand up. I asked the other person to cool it with the clicking and everybody stayed down.
> 
> There are lots of tools available to use for training. They all have advantages and disadvantages, but none works well if the trainer/handler doesn't understand how to use them.



Oh I remember, I almost blew a gasket during Timi's "final exam" for puppy class. We were having a competition for longest down stays, and one of the other people in class was clicking (no treat) every five - ten seconds! Timi's ears were twitching and she was wondering if she was finished every single time! She realized that the clicks were not for her, but they were very annoyingly breaking her focus on me ?
You would think that by the last class, which used clicker training through-out that they would have known better!


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## TeamPoodle (Aug 10, 2015)

I totally understand how you feel Catherine about juggling everything! At first I wished we had used a marker word instead of the clicker because I kept dropping things, but now as I train Riley in busy/distracting situations I've found the clicker cuts through all the noise in a way my voice does not. Plus, my husband and I have matching clickers so the "marker" is the same no matter who is working with him. I've also found it useful when Riley is greeting new people. I'll click when he sniffs them. Where my voice would send him running back to my side, the clicker is a more "neutral" sound, and he'll casually look at me like "wait, what? I did something right?"

But I agree with everyone, whether you use a marker word, a clicker, or a different way of training all-together, you need to know how to use the tools properly. Clicker training is new to me, I was taught 13 years ago to train a dog with a choke collar. :ahhhhh: There's LOTS of ways people use those ineffectively too. (Although I must say I'll never go back to choke collars - I MUCH prefer +R!). I just thought it was a weird thing to hand out. People who use clickers already have them, and people who don't have no idea what to do with it.


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## Click-N-Treat (Nov 9, 2015)

I use a verbal marker or a clicker, depending on what I'm training and where I am training. Random clicking in a class sounds like a nightmare.


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Click-N-Treat that clicking person is a very nice person but I don't love seeing her arrive for class because the clicking makes me crazy as well as being very distracting to most of the other people and dogs. Very few of the people who come to my classes use clickers, most use verbal markers. Most of them are serious performance sports folks.


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

That person who was handing them out should have at least put a recommendation with them with a website or something that would explain the concepts. That is weird to just hand them out. I have used a clicker a lot over the years and also a verbal marker. Studies show that the click sound registers in a different part of the brain and the information gets to the cortex quicker. But yeah...sometimes it can be awkward, depending on what you're doing and sometimes it's just more practical, I find to use a marker. It still works wonders compared to not using a marker.


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## lisasgirl (May 27, 2010)

People clicking every few seconds are probably clicking for duration...I know I had a class that encouraged that. Archie generally thinks the click means he's done, though, so I've never used it that way. I just delay the click.

The thing I don't like about them is that they all sound mostly the same - with a verbal marker, Archie knows it's me making the sound to reward him. With the clicker, he can get confused or distracted more easily if someone else in the area also has a clicker.

I've heard of people trying to use them as an attention-getter or even a punishment! Clicker training is getting more popular, but that doesn't mean everyone knows what they are. And it's not like it's intuitive if you haven't heard of it before. You'd think there'd at least be a little slip of paper with quick instructions on it included!


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## Tiny Poodles (Jun 20, 2013)

lisasgirl said:


> People clicking every few seconds are probably clicking for duration...I know I had a class that encouraged that. Archie generally thinks the click means he's done, though, so I've never used it that way. I just delay the click.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Click for duration with no treat given for the click? That's not how clicking works. How would you mark the end of the behavior?


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

I generally think of clicks and verbal markers as ways to indicate a good response. If teaching a behavior then I would follow that with a treat. If it is a behavior the the dog knows I would only mark the better responses and only treat the most fabulous responses. I don't think the dog should assume click or the verbal marker should mean "now here's your treat" to a dog that know the behavior.


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## Tiny Poodles (Jun 20, 2013)

lily cd re said:


> I generally think of clicks and verbal markers as ways to indicate a good response. If teaching a behavior then I would follow that with a treat. If it is a behavior the the dog knows I would only mark the better responses and only treat the most fabulous responses. I don't think the dog should assume click or the verbal marker should mean "now here's your treat" to a dog that know the behavior.



I think of clickers as a teaching tool - a way to shape behavior to what you want. I would never use a clicker after they know the behavior.


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## ItzaClip (Dec 1, 2010)

Tiny Poodles said:


> I think of clickers as a teaching tool - a way to shape behavior to what you want. I would never use a clicker after they know the behavior.


Exactly, unless you want to reshape, tighten or retrain. This is a misconception about clicker training. You DONT have to carry a clicker for the rest of your life. I rarely carry one. That being said I have been waiting over a year for the clicker ring to be developed! 
The click does end the behavior ( releasing from position), so I would use its your choice ( Susan Garrett recallers term), or impulse control exercises to get duration. Works insanely well. I video myself teaching grooming clients little puppies in minutes that have never had any training on them. 

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

I only use a clicker for teaching a new behavior. And that includes shaping an existing behavior into a better example, because that_ IS_ a new behavior...starting a new base line from which to build. Clickers are a great tool for duration. Operant dogs learn to wait for the click and it's almost an automatic thing for them to get onto a longer and longer duration of something. Teaching out of sight stays with building of duration for example are easy for dogs who are taught without "corrections" and instead classical conditioning. 


A clicker or a verbal marker is a conditioned reinforcer and if you don't follow it with a reinforcer, it can lose it's association. It _must_ be followed by a reinforcer which by definition is something that changes behavior AND something the dog LOVES. I have clicked by accident sometimes right when the dog did something terrible. I STILL had to treat right after because to not is risking losing the conditioned association. The behavior can be re-adjusted later. If the dog knows the behavior, a clicker is no longer necessary. But then it's time to put the behavior on a variable reinforcement schedule or a fixed schedule first for a few sessions, then a variable.


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## Tiny Poodles (Jun 20, 2013)

ItzaClip said:


> Exactly, unless you want to reshape, tighten or retrain. This is a misconception about clicker training. You DONT have to carry a clicker for the rest of your life. I rarely carry one. That being said I have been waiting over a year for the clicker ring to be developed!
> The click does end the behavior ( releasing from position), so I would use its your choice ( Susan Garrett recallers term), or impulse control exercises to get duration. Works insanely well. I video myself teaching grooming clients little puppies in minutes that have never had any training on them.
> 
> Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk



Yes, I previously resisted the idea of clickers, but find I get much better results with them than a verbal cue. And hand signals are retained much better than words for commands. A lady at the dog park was trying to get friendly with Timi so I gave her some treats and she was asking Timi for some basic behaviors. Timi was acting like she didn't know what she was saying, so to hurry things along, I, standing right behind the woman, silently started "translating" for Timi with hand signals, and the woman was delighted when Timi suddenly began following her commands lol!


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## lily cd re (Jul 23, 2012)

Oh my fuzzy head yesterday did not quite say what I meant to. When I was talking about using the clicker for something the dogs knew I really was thinking about things the dog had the foundation of but that you wanted to improve. 

With BF having left so early in the morning to drive to Indianapolis and my missing about 3.5 hours of sleep Thursday night/Friday morning I probably shouldn't have been formulating anything beyond yes/no responses.

That being said when a handler is properly instructed on how to use a marker of any sort it does improve the training of any dog to do so.


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## Poodlebeguiled (May 27, 2013)

I think there's such a thing as over-use of a clicker. Clickers, imo aren't needed for everything. But for some intricate behavior or something that requires precision, where the time has to be very accurate, a clicker really makes a definite mark. For example, teaching Matisse to pivot on his front feet, so that his front feet stay within a few inches of each other and his hind end revolves around in a circle both directions, it was useful to use a clicker. I put a dinner plate upside down on the floor and he had to figure out to put his front feet on it. (the dinner plate was used as a sort of placement helper) So, I shaped his behavior to get his feet on the plate and stay there. So with each step of progress toward that, a clicker was useful. Then it was needed to get him to move a step but only with his hind feet, over a tad, then a little more and more until he was moving fluidly. Once he got onto it, the clicker was no longer necessary. 

But a verbal marker, like "Yessss!" (with lots of emphasis on the ssss) it is good enough and not over-kill for behaviors that don't require such pin pointing accuracy. In fact, some dogs are a little high strung and will show a bit of nervousness at the sound of a clicker if it was used too much, over and over for every little thing... or there might be a little too much focus on the clicker itself...a little too much anticipation maybe, is what I'm trying to say. I want my dogs to be aware of what_ they're_ doing. 

So, I think that the clicker is an awesome tool for behaviors that require pin point accuracy, timing that must be precise. But I don't know that they're so necessary for behaviors that have more of a tolerance such as the recall. An enthusiastic "Yesss" and loads of fun when they come works great. I think clickers are very helpful in behaviors of duration so you can mark the end of the duration and help make the dog aware of what they just did. But they're not absolutely necessary for everything. 

Clickers can be hard to hold and carry around when you have to deal with poop bags, leashes, multiple dogs. I do some training while on our walks and I certainly don't want to deal with one more thing to carry or hold. I use a clicker only for certain things.


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