January 13th 2009 10:43 am
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Well, yesterday we started clicker training.

First I want to say that I've never been a fan of clicker training. I never liked the idea of relying on a training aid. My dogs are trained off finger snaps, with praise as a reward. I don't give treats to reward behavior, just praise. I also practice NILIF, my dogs sit for dinner, and leave it until I release them to eat. Ruger has all his basic commands down, has a fairly solid recall, walks pretty darn good on a loose leash now without a prong collar, and knows a few tricks.

That being said, recently Asher got me interested in the idea of clicker training. I started looking into it, to teach tricks. Ruger is a great trick dog. So we started yesterday. I went though all the basic commands, reinforcing them with the clicker and treats. Just so he'd get the idea. Well... he didn't. In fact, it was like the clicker wasn't even there. He still did everything, but paid no attention to the clicker. But still, we went at it for 20 minutes (I don't like to train longer than that, as dogs tend to get bored).

Today, we started again. Basic commands, completely ignored the clicker. Even the treats. However, once I started teaching him his two new tricks, sneak (crawl) and hide, it clicked (no pun intended). He suddenly recognized the clicker, and started doing hide without the aid of the tape on his nose. Sure, we still have a lot of work to do, but still, I think he's starting to get it.

(My idea behind the tricks is, he already knows BANG and he plays dead... I thought I'd teach him to hide and sneak, then get caught and shot... thought it would be cute... later we'll move on to more advanced behaviors like fetch beer, y'know, the important stuff)

I'm just so excited... I was discouraged at first, but stuck with it, and it's a lot of fun. Hopefully I can reinforce some manners with it as well, like jumping on people. He does ok with it, he doesn't exactly barrel people down when they come to visit, but after a minute he tries the hop to see if someone will let him up or not.

Anyway, we'll write again later in the week!