Clicker Training – The Good, The Bad, and Ugly?

I have been using the clicker in my dog training for almost 30 years now. I learned from some of the original group of people that brought operant conditioning from training whales and dolphins to dog training – Morgan Spector (author of CLICKER TRAINING FOR OBEDIENCE), and Virginia Broitman (TAKE A BOW WOW famous video).  Morgan was one of the founding fathers of clicker training for dogs with the Baileys and he remains a very good friend of mine.

I incorporated the clicker into training every aspect of everything I did with my dogs from Search and Rescue, to agility, to obedience trials, sheep herding, and even to tracking.  I used it for house training, social skills and basic good manners.  I still use it with all my puppies.

At one time, I was committed to using the clicker with every client dog.  Now, over the years, while I still teach using Marker Training, and much of the operant conditioning that came from B. F. Skinner, I have refined much of the concept to be more helpful to a wider range of people and dogs.

The clicker can provide a multitude of flexibility for training dogs; however, the concept can go far beyond that little handheld noise maker.  In theory, the idea is to speak more clearly to the dog about the things we want him to do.  We people are very verbal. Mostly we talk too much to our dogs when we are teaching.  Dogs are not verbal beings.  They watch behavior of others – dogs and people.  The clicker carries no emotion as our voice does which is extremely helpful in communicating to our dogs. However, once we are familiar with using a marker, we can use a voice marker – “YES!” – to communicate to the dog instead.  It is, however not quite as effective as the unemotional clicker. 

 It is extremely effective for introducing behaviors we want the dog to do.  What is important to remember is that the clicker does NOT have to be used with the dog forever.  It is a marker that marks the behavior we want the dog to do.  Once our dog understands the behaviors we want, the clicker simply goes away.  With a clicker savvy dog, we can bring it out if we need to sharpen up an old behavior that is getting sloppy (like “come”) or we can bring it out if we want to teach something new.

What becomes extremely difficult for many people is making sure that the clicker is used as a marker and not an attention getter.  Here is the problem; when the clicker is used for getting the attention of a dog that was taught the clicker as a marker, then using the clicker to get his attention will signify to the dog that whatever he was doing when you clicked is something you want him to do.  As an example, if you click to get your dog’s attention while he is playing with another dog so he will come, the dog will think that playing with the other dog is what you want, not the “come” part.  If you used it as an attention getter to get him to “come” what you are really teaching him is to play with other dogs.  The proper way to use a clicker in this scenario is to call the dog’s name or say “come.” When the dog looks at you and begins to come, then you click to let the dog know that looking at you/coming was the behavior you wanted, not playing with the dogs.  The clicker marks the moment when the dog is doing what you WANT him to do. 

A clicker could be used as an attention getter if it is never PREVIOUSLY used as a marker, but it cannot be both.  What is a better choice to use as an attention getter would be a whistle.

On the positive side of clicker or marker training is that it forces we humans to DO something about behaviors we like instead of always disciplining behaviors we don’t like!

Caption:  Clicker training busy puppies is exceptionally fun and can help teach difficult behaviors such as the “watch” command or eye contact.   This is 13 week old Mariah after one lesson teaching “watch”. She can already “watch” even outside!