Tips on starting clicker training

I have decided to try to teach Culotte some tricks using clicker training, everything I have taught her so far has been mainly using praise and a few treats (9 times out of 10 when treats are involved I loose her attention)
As we are going in for a fun dog show in august I thought it would be nice if she could do some fun tricks but I don’t want to b***** things up as normally she learns really quickly, but can I learn to do the clicker thing . I have read through Alisons thread on clicker training and am not sure why you don’t say the command you want the dog to do in the first place. Any tips on starting clicker training would be appriciated.

You want the dog to work out for itself that the action causes the reward, if you say the word and it does a different action you have messed up the association.

I always start with an empty hand touch, hold your hand out and click when the dogs nose gets there or therabouts and then reward. Then move the hand around high and low, then if I was getting a constant success rate I'd put a word in.

Have fun!

rune

make sure you 'charge' the clicker first by simply clicking and treating, once you are satisfied that they associate the click with a reward then you can progress onto actual training!! With all types of training though the real trick is in the timing!!!
Becky

Hi Lynda have you seen this..

http://www.dogsey.com/showthread.php?t=11324

The following sites are fantastic resources for you:

http://www.clickertraining.com/dogtraining

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

http://www.learningaboutdogs.com/aca...books_dvd.html

LADs does on line training too.

Good luck.

Thanks everyone. I have borrowed a clicker from a friend this afternoon so I am tooled up
I read that one first mini
I will have a good read of the links tomorrow SB and then we should be ready to give it a go

Ooh, you have lots of fun ahead!

Just to repeat what Rune and Mahooli have said, first make absolutely sure that your dog knows that a click = a treat. (If you ever click by mistake, always treat!)

What I did with mine was click, treat click treat for a while. At that point they are sat there thinking, oh go on click it! But I don't, so they do something (sit, stand, down anything) and I click that. So they do it again, and that doesn't work, so they try something else, and that does!

Once they have the general idea that it is THEM that makes it click, the world's your lobster