Dog Clicker Games: Advanced Clicker Training

April 29, 2015 by Fanna Easter

Advanced Clicker Training Game for Dogs

Once you’ve mastered beginner and intermediate clicker timing games, it’s time to focus on improving your timing when clicking small movements for complex behaviors. Yes, it’s time to push your clicker training skills even further.

Touch Your Arm (You’ll Need a Partner)

You’ll need a friend to help with this game. Ask your friend to touch your forearm with one finger. As her finger touches your arm, click. Basically, you’re teaching your friend “touch with one finger.”

Now, I’ve watched people try to cheat during this game, but they were actually learning to click too late. Instead of watching their partner’s finger, people have clicked once they felt the touch on their arm. Well, that’s clicking too late. If you click after “feeling” a touch, you’re probably clicking your friend for moving her finger away from your arm. Don’t believe me? Spin around and watch. 🙂

VIDEO: Improving Your Clicker Training Skills – Advanced Game

RELATED: Clicker Training for Dogs

Pause Button on DVR

By far, this is my favorite game to improve clicker timing! When watching TV, choose a specific behavior you want to “click” for, such as the below examples. Press your DVR pause button to freeze during a specific moment. Basically, you’re using the DVR pause button as a clicker. You’re clicking the pause button to capture a specific dog behavior.

Person drinking: Placing glass against her lips or setting glass down on counter.
Animal running: Pause when an animal’s four feet are off the ground (fully extended).
Person talking: Pause when mouth is open.

You can choose anything to pause (click) with a DVR–use your imagination! Shoot, you can even pause blinking, pausing when a person’s eyes are closed.

VIDEO: Using a DVR to Practice Your Clicker Timing

Clicker Training Game for Beginners

April 27, 2015 by Fanna Easter

Improve Your Clicker Training Skills

Dog Clicker Game

Practice does make perfect or pretty close to it. Using a clicker to teach your dog new skills is easy and super quick, but your clicker timing (yes, you :)) must be spot on. Now, mistakes happen. I’ve made them many times and you’ve probably noticed them on our videos, but mistakes are a valuable part of learning. To improve my clicker timing, I play a few games, which I’ll share with you. I recommend practicing these games before a dog training session–think of it as stretching before a run. 🙂

RELATED: Crate Rest Games for Dogs

Hand Game

Check out this easy game that improves your clicker timing. This is perfect for beginners! We play this game during class usually during week one of puppy or basic class, and repeat when needed.

In this video, you’ll click when I fully extend my hand. We’ll move slowly and then pick up speed so watch carefully. At home, you can practice with a friend.

VIDEO: Improving Your Clicker Training Skills – Beginner Game

Make the Game Harder

Once you get the hang of it, ask a friend to make it harder by moving her hand faster. Also, when playing the game, drop a treat into a cup every time you click. This makes it very realistic because you always give your dog a treat after clicking.

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Come When Called Part 2: Adding Distance to “Come” Cue

September 18, 2014 by Fanna Easter

How to Train a Dog to Come to You

How to perform an emergency recall
Call your dog indoors from the backyard
Call your dog back to you around distractions (squirrels, etc.)
How to teach multiple dogs to come back to you
Fun games

RELATED: Come When Called Part 1: Intro

Directions

View first video and practice homework for seven days.
View second video and practice homework for seven days.
View third video and practice homework for seven days.
View fourth, and final, video.

Each video contains tons of information, so rewind and watch several times. Bookmark for easy future reference.

What you will need:

Note: Always enroll your dog in a dog training classes. This video should not be used in place of dog training class attendance.

WATCH: Come When Called Part 2: Adding Distance to “Come” Cue Video

See you in seven days! If you have any questions, please add them to the comment section below!

UP NEXT: Come When Called Part 3: Adding Distractions

Dog Trainer Karen Pryor

June 23, 2014 by Fanna Easter

As a dog trainer, Karen Pryor brought clicker training to the industry of dog trainers in the mid-1980s. Her background comes from a career in marine mammal biology and behavioral science. More than 40 years ago, Karen pioneered force-free training methods for animals by using a clicker and a guide stick as a means to training animals, specifically dogs, with positive reinforcement training methods.

Karen has done remarkable things in the industry, not only for dog trainers, but she has also done cognitive research of many species of animals.

She is an accomplished author of many books and research papers, including her infamous book “Don’t Shoot the Dog.”

She began by training dolphins using a whistle and soon figured out that she wanted to bridge her dolphin training experience with other applications, such as dog training.

Karen Pryor on Training Animals

In the training video below, Karen Pryor explains the simplicity of using positive reinforcement training to train her beta fish. She demonstrates how these techniques can be used to train just about any animal with a marker, target object and training treat.

VIDEO: An Introduction to Target Training a Fish!

“Don’t Shoot the Dog” was published in 1984 and quickly changed the landscape of the dog training industry. What dog trainers refer to as clicker training was adapted from an application of Animal Behavior Analysis invented and developed by Keller Breland, Marian Breland Bailey, and Bob Bailey.

Dog Trainer Books by Karen Pryor

Karen Pryor has published 21 unique works throughout her career, including:

“Clicker Training for Dogs” (1999)
“Getting Started: Clicker Training for Dogs” (2001)
“Click To Win: Clicker Training for the Show Ring” (2002)
“Getting Started: Clicker Training for Cats” (2003)
“Click Tricks: 10 Fun and Easy Tricks Any Dog Can Learn” (2010)

VIDEO: Cat Clicker Training in Action

She continued to blow the dog training world away with “Reaching the Animal Mind.” According to ClickerTraining.com, the book “describes how to bring out the undiscovered creativity, intelligence, and personality of the animals in our lives.” She expanded the first edition of “Don’t Shoot the Dog,” and went into a much deeper level on how animals learn in her revised edition of “Don’t Shoot the Dog – The New Art of Teaching and Training.”

She has spoken all across the globe about the neurobiology and behavior science, including a lecture she gave during a TagTeach seminar in 2012.

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