lumberjack

does anybody have any experience with clicker training? Bubs is great in the house and on the porch, but when he gets a scent it is way more powerful then treats. any ideas?

houndmomma

Sorry I haven't - funny as it may sound - We've always used the "Sit" command to get them to listen when they’re on chase or doing anything we want them to stop when we’re outside. They just stop in their track and sit still one of us gets to them.

I have a harder time training my hubby than I do the pups – so with him I need to use as few commands as possible to use on the pups – I know this isn’t the “correct” way to go about it – but you have to work with what you got and I’m not trading hubby in because he can’t learn all the commands. I call it my “work around”

Jen~

__________________
Momma to Lucy age 12 ~ Basset Hound
Momma to Rickie age 5 ~ Shi-Poo (don’t tell him though – he thinks he’s a hound dog)
Momma to Mabel age -1 ~ Basset Hound
Momma to Flash – RIP 2000 ~ 2011 – Gone in body but with me in spirit ~ You will live on forever in my heart baby ~ Je t'aime

loopylou

Monty was trained this way at puppy school. Graduated with flying colours!

Only problem is it doesn't seem to work in the park as soon as other dogs/smell come into play! Good luck

henry'smum

I have clicker trained horses before but not dogs, but Jen maybe we should try clicker training our husbands!!! I tried treating him like a naughty puppy and it worked briliantly until he worked out my game!

Mikey T

yes so what is the problem. If you are talking about the dog being distracted while training etc this is nothing that is not a problem in any type of training.

first off a clicker is simply a tool not a training method a clicker can be used in a variety of ways if you ask 10 differnet people whate clicker training is the will give ten differenet answers none of them wrong so in the end clicker training is not a very accurate way to describe a training method.

If you are having problem with distraction in training is suggest the follow.. start making a list of distraction of these distraction and racking the strength of the distraction on a scale of 1 -10 to help you get started distractions

when training abehavior intiatial it is done in a very low distraction setting the dog learns the behavior and the owner suddne expects the dog to be profiecient un high distract it does not happen. On but once the behavior is learn slowly and systematical train the behavior under increasing distracting situations if you want a truely reliable behavior. Every time you increase the distraction level you need to simultanious decrease the criteria/dificulty of the behavior. If the dog can heel for a minute in low distraction you will want to reduce it to like 10 second or less when you increase the distraction level increase the chance to reward behavior you want and build endureance from there.

That said distraction is on one aspect of this the other is this. dogs lapply what the learn much differently than humans. Humans learn sonething new and look to apply to every situation they can dog basical do the opposite. they look ate how what they learned is different than other situtation., So if you teach a dog to sit in the ktichen that is what they learned. Sit very often has no meaning in the living room or outside etc because the cue sit has other cntext that need to be met before it is effective and has meaning for the dog. Before most dogs generalize a behavior thaty need ot do it 100,s if not thousand of different context so to simply say the dog is distracted by smell outdoor may be only the small half of it. It is like the dog does not even understand the cue to begin with which make it much more likely to be distracted.

see DEPOSITS INTO THE PERFECT RECALL ACCOUNT

the Sit Test


Generalization and Discrimination: Fraternal Twins

i post this following video more than any other but it is simple and powerful. Using food as a distraction and a means of teaching impulse control
its yer choice

but it is a good example for demonstration increase the distraction level incrimentally to get a real strong and reliable behavior.

If you want to get in to specifics on the situtation and problem you are encountering you need to provide more details hopefully what i Have provided will give you some insite into how dogs learn and how to take advantage of that to trin train them.

and on video on one of mine to show that basset are capable of working through distractions an outdoor environment
Westfield Fair Grounds 2008

Mikey T

when it comes to dog training in reality there is no right way or wrong way there is only what works and what doesn't work for you which is likely to be completely different for someone else. for me reward the dog for a down most of the time it is not cued so when the dog get fustrated in training or whatever that will be their defuualt behavior for most people it is a sit . the agility venue I compete in requires a down on the table so i prefer the default behavior to be a down.

Mikey T

!. not all food and treats are created equal when training under more distraction you need to make the reward more appealing as well and food can be funny in that for some dogs familiarity breeed contempt. I had one dog that would turn her nose up at steak for a milkbone or charlie bear if she had been training with steak for a few days and not had a milkbone or charlie bear in a couple of mounth for here novaielty was important however not the bulk of the dogs it have worked with so it is important to get to know your dog and it likes and dislike and quirks.

2. cfood is not the only reward if sniffing is more rewarding to the dog than food by almeand use sniffing as a reward. Using behavior as reward is known as the premak Principal often caled grandma's law as in you have to eat your peas before you can have any desert. I use sniffing all the time when training heeling out side. Dog heel release for free time sniffing as a reward recalled back to a heell, off sniffing . By doing so the behavior you are rewarding in this case healing gains value equivelent to or nearly equivelent to sniffing. So if the distraction out sider are true more valuable tha food use it to your advantage. However many times that is not the case in reality it is
1. the behavior is not generalized so the cue command has no value to the dog outside. it does not know what it means to begin with so abscent any meaning input from the owner/trainer the dog goes of and does what it wants.

2. Any learning and training creates stress. one need to manage this stress in a dog. Sniffing in basset and other activities and especially inactivitly in basset ie flat basset are often stress related. Ways to reduce stress in training is increase the rate of reward, make the steps between criteria changes in learning a new behavior very small and incrimental. consider changing approach to make it easier for the dog to understand what you want.

Mikey T

shaping Spouses

Eliciting Cooperation from Other People

Reinforcing Good Behavior Around Us


Humans and the Laws of Learning

jhaas

Our basset is in clicker training classes right now, and I gotta say, I really don't see the point of it all. All he does is try to eat the clicker.
He responds only to scents and loud noises.

Mikey T

If that is true the case you see no point in It i would quickly look for a different class and instructor because if you do not understand the how and why something is supose to work it is very difficult to impossible to make the adjust you need to to make it work for you and yoer dog. Again the clicker is a tool and can bew used in a lot of differrent way many of which are incompatible. so I do no not like the term clicker class, clicker training, etc because it does nothing to explain what is actual ocurring or descibe the training methodology. That said I am going to make a leap of faith here and the majority of Trainers use a Clicker as a reward marker, that is it is a cue to the dog that a reward is comming. So that the clicker takes on the value of the reward itself and can be delivered more timely than a food treat from the hand etc so it a very percise tool which can be good or bad.

In order to be effect the first thing that must be done is associate the clicker with a food reward. the olds stanby for trhis is cue the dog to sit when it starts does or is the middle of sitting click and follow with a food reward. As we seen from my earlier post there can be a very big problem with this in that you have a cue infront of the click and action by the dog etc that many dogs put together as a continium in that all most occur for the food reward and the click itself is never associate by it self with a reward. So i do not like this technique, Not saying it does not and can not work for most dogs just pointing out the limitation.

If the purpose is to associate the clicker that food is comming I suggest doing just that and do not make it dependant on the dog doing anything make it completely random in different setting , circumstances etc. Click treat regardless of what the dog was doing or does. you need to be doing this at leas 30-50 times a day., when the dog start consisteing look toward you after a click for food then and only then can you start to use it as a reward marker. If you try to do so before you are simply pissing in the wind.


so why a clicker and not just use food. actual as one use the clicker more that is percisely what happen they actual use the clicker les and deliver food more. That is because the clicker can be a very powereful tool if used correctly but if not use to it potential it looses some of that power A clicker is very percise tool it tell the dog exactly what you like. so when used to train inpercise behavior like loose leash waking it loss that percision and powere. Simply 'chucking" food is perciseenough for most behavior people want. Also for the way most people train and use a clicker the Click marks the behavior but also ends the behavior and the food reward all the behavior between the click and the reward so food delivered in a timely manner is important but the clicker does not work so well for training behavior in which involve continuing motion.

Some trainer use "clicker Training" as a discription for training by shaping. Shaping, luring modeling, targeting and capturing are all different ways to get a behavior. and actual have nothing to do with the tools used you could use a clicker with any of these techniques to get a behavior but clicker training is often associated with shaping because it one of the petter tools because of the percision involved to have sucess with shaping behavior. If you are realitively new to dog training shaping is going to be very fustrating starting out because of the knowledge and experience need in time etc

getting behaviors

there may be something more fundamental going on that need to be address and has nothing to do with clicker or any other tool

Have Your Earned Your Dog's Attention?

Rewarding Attention

Attention

Attention Training and Name Recognition