Clicker training - Am I doing it wrong?

In agility we have been introduced to clicker training to help training. Ive been trying to using it to help K get a good "watch me" command as she can sometimes get a bit hyped up around other dogs running and lose focus. Ive never done it before as she was my first pup and I was worried about getting the timing wrong and having too many hands full etc.

I charged the clicker like they said, just clicked her fed her hundreds of times. Then we were told to wait until the dog performs the action you want, click and treat, dont give any command yet. K spends all her time either looking at the clicker, or my pocker, or the treat bag, or wherever Im hiding the goodies once she finds out where they are. She looks at me sometimes but Im defo not her favourite thing to stare it I dont know what I can do with the treats as I need them near to give to her when she does it right. Am I doing it wrong as she just doesnt seem to be getting it? I think my timing is ok so dont know what else to do. Advice would be much welcomed

all dogs are different, my Ben isnt the biggest fan of eye contact and would stare at a food pocket all day if he could
Mia on the other hand loves to stare at me

One thing you can do to take the focus off the treats are puppy zen/leave it exercises

Hold a treat in your hand and whenever she goes close to it just close your hand over
Keep your hand closed over as she tried to lick and sniff and paw the hand (if she is a biter then you cant do this)
Then the sec she moves away from your hand click and treat

repeate repeate repeate until you presenting the open handed treat means she turns her head away from it (you can spped this up but making sure your treat comes from the other side so she gets used to looking away to get the treat

If you do get any eye contact I would jackpot for that

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCAe0...3&feature=plcp
here is Mia learning it - you can see how rubbish my timing is - I almost teach her to paw for treats at one point - but manage to phase that out

Remember that you don't need to give a treat immediately after the click - the whole point of the clicker is that the sound marks the behaviour at the exact point to allow for human delay. So you can go eyecontact - click immediately - retrieve treat from pocket 5 seconds later. What I tend to do is keep a tub (takeaway tubs work well) on the counter, out of dog's eyeline. Clicker is often behind my back or in a pocket to prevent the dog focusing on it.

A tip that was given to me when struggling with "watch me" is to not stare right into the dog's eyes but to focus your eyes on the tip of their nose, less intimidating for nervous dogs. I also used his focus on the treat in my hand as a lure first off so he twigged on the action (bringing the treat up to between my eyes) , but with lures you need to phase them out pretty quickly or the dog becomes reliant on the lure as a cue.

Ohhh she is adorable,love watching the little cogs turning Thanks.

Ive trained her with lures since she was a baby so maybe she's stil looking for some guidance on what to do? Shesnot nervous in any way I think her problem is just that shes a greedy little scavenger who wishes she was a jedi

I'm having the same issue with my little one. I charged the clicker, but he doesnt seem to respond to it at all. He just stares at the treat and even after I click to let him know he's done something right, its as if the click doesnt matter to him. He has a very high food drive though (except when playing, then nothing can get him to listen) so maybe clicker training wont work for him. But good luck to you! Agility seems like it would be very fun

I did Doggy Zen with Spencer coz he'd just sit there staring at where he knew the treats were and drooling. Once we'd established that staring at the food didn't work we moved on to actually training things.

In all honesty I'd start with something where it's more obvious to the dog that it's their behaviour that causes the click and treat. I've found the bigger, more obvious movements better for that than the smaller, more subtle ones although I dunno whether that's just me. And eye contact can be scary for some dogs. Spen will happily stare a hole through my head, Rupert found that sort of eye contact stressful.

I'd start with an empty hand touch and then do other more obvious things. Once they catch on it works very fast Fizz is now working brilliantly although he took a while to catch on.

If you really need the watch first try putting the food near your face and clicking when the eye contact happens, gradually remove the hand whilst clicking for the eye contact. You'll get it as the dog will look to you automatically to see what you are doing.

rune

Thanks guys.

Rune she already can touch targets, shall I do some more of those with the clicker do you think?

Yes I think I would---it'll give you and her a bit of confidence.

Remember you don't need the treats to be shoved in instantly---you can have a few seconds gap so they can be put to one side out of the way a bit or be in a pocket. I tend to live in the fleece sleeveless tops and use those pockets.

rune