Clicker training with two puppies?

Hi everyone,

I've been reading a lot of this forum and have found so much useful advice, so thank you!

I have (perhaps a rather silly?) question. We have two 5 month old working cockers (Jet and Copper), and I would like to start clicker training them. But, if they are both in the same room or area, and I click one of them for good behaviour, will the other one get confused, as the clicker sound will not always mean "good" depending on which dog I'm rewarding? Will they need to be entirely separated for this to work, or could I attach their names before the click or something along these lines?

Does this make sense?

The same problem applies if you have more than one dog of any age.

If you are training indoors you can put the other dog in a crate or tie it up or in another room whilst you are training the other one and then swap.

When the dogs get a bit further on in their training then you can use their names to indicate which dog you are talking to.

So for example, if I am throwing the ball for my dogs I will tell them both to sit, throw the ball and then indicate by using the relevant name which dog is to go and fetch it.

But this is a bit advanced at your stage of training.

HTH

Excellent, thanks for the super quick reply!

They both know the basics (names, sit, lie down, come, etc), but I think I need to bite the bullet and start training one at a time!

For just catching good behaviour though, say I'm in the house and one does somethin without prompting that I want to reward, I take it I can I just say that one's name and click without affecting the "effectiveness" of the clicker for the other dog?

At the moment, regardless of who I'm speaking to, they will both carry out what I'm asking in the hope of getting a reward!!!

Personally I would not train this way, but if it works for you, go for it.

The idea of clicking is meant to be the click marks the action that you what at a critical point, you can then go onto reward, and it doesnt matter if the reward takes a small while to be given.

I have two dogs and can not clicker train them whilst they are both about, but even with a dog clicker trained you can still train them somethings together and then use name and praise and treat etc, they dont always need to be taught everything with a clicker.

No.... the click marks what the dog was doing in that exact split second, so that would probably be worse than useless - by the time the click happens it might mark behaviours that you don't want! Or at best, it would only reward the dog's reaction to hearing its name.

I'm just starting to clicker train my elderly rescue dog, but I have to make sure our sessions are out of earshot of my other dog, Merlin - with whom I started clicker training the day I brought him home at 9 weeks.

I guess this is another reason why everyone says that when you have two puppies together, you absolutely have to train them separately.

Hmmmm ok sounds like I might be just adding to my workload. Should I just ditch the idea and stick to names - good boy - treat?

My issue (maybe i'm just overcomplicating my thought process), is, say I ask Copper to come (or sit or whatever), Jet will always also do what is asked (or vice versa), should I ignore this as he wasn't being asked, or reward as he responded to the command??

Just to clarify, I haven't used any clicker training with them at all yet, just I had read a lot about how much success people are having using this training tool and had been thinking about it.

At the moment, they are both together all the time and they are fine so far, but I think that I'm going to have issues in the future if I don't start separating them for training!

Just a thought, do you think it might be a good idea to learn about how clicker training actually works before embarking on it?

The following may help:

Books, DVDs, workshops and on line training are available here:

http://www.learningaboutdogs.com/htm..._training.html

http://www.clickersolutions.com/articles/index.htm

http://www.clickertraining.com/

HTH

I have read extensively already, I know how it works, have seen it used in training, hence why I'm thinking it won't work when two dogs are in the same room. What part of my post makes you think I don't, maybe I'm being unclear?

Yeah MerlinsMum, that's exactly what my issue was r.e. marking the behaviour.

Seperate training time methinks!