Marker-based training aka "Clicker Training" is an approach to training your dog but it's also a life-improving philosophy!
A person with any disability would do well to learn how to apply clicker training effectively. (By the way, you don’t have to use a clicker to clicker train! You can use a word “Yup!” or sound like a whistle.)
There are many benefits to learning how to clicker train your service dog:
Generalizing:
Once we start training our dogs to perform different behaviors in different locations, we find that they are often confused in the new location, not being stubborn. We discover that our dogs don’t “know” a behavior or task until they have had a chance to relearn and practice it in many different locations. This is because they tend to look for small clues to tell them what we want. In each new location, they have to relearn the behavior from the start. We are very similar to our dogs. Most people think they are quite good at applying skills learned in one environment and used in another. I am sad to tell you, most are not. Think of when you have taken a class and then tried to use the information and skills in another class. I bet you made mistakes the first few times and had to relearn the skill? Perhaps even go back and read the information? Learning the principles of clicker training and applying them to many different behaviors, tasks and in different situations, we can learn how to generalize all of our knowledge and skills better. Once we become very skilled at generalizing, we can apply it anywhere correctly. That opens up a whole new world of what behaviors and tasks we can train our service dog to do for us. It also improves how we function in the world! Isn’t that the whole point of having a service dog?
Read Dog Language:
In order to use the clicker or marker well, we need to learn to read dog communication. Communication between dog and handler goes two ways. The dog must read us and we must read the dog. The dog’s communication tells us if he is understanding what we want or how he is feeling about what he is doing. This information is useful when we are training. It lets us know that we need to modify our approach so our dog better understands what we are asking. This in turn, gets us thinking from another being’s perspective. Why might the dog be doing what he is doing? There are reasons behind the behavior beyond being stubborn or stupid. This builds empathy in us. Empathy is a key ingredient in building and maintaining strong relationships with our dogs and with other people.
Shaping Improves Observation Skills:
One of the best parts of clicker training is shaping. Shaping involves starting with a tiny piece of the final behavior and then waiting for the dog to offer more of the behavior to get closer to the final behavior you want. Think of it like a series of snapshots in time that makes up a whole behavior. To use a phone, you must pick up the phone, turn it on, dial the numbers, press the connect button, then put the phone to your ear and wait for the ringing sound to stop. When we shape, each one of these behaviors can be marked and rewarded before putting them together as a whole behavior. Even smaller steps like bringing the phone from your chest up to your ear can be broken into smaller pieces. Learning to watch for these tiny behaviors improves our skills of observing.
We Use Our Minds and the Environment to Teach:
When clicker training is used, we use our minds and the environmental set up to teach the dog what we want. We don’t need to physically interact with a dog to teach him and he can even be at a distance from us. The dog’s job is to figure out what will make us click and reward him. It is our job to figure out how to set up the situation so our dog will succeed. This allows more people with physical disabilities to train their own service dog. We learn that in life, the physical and emotional environment plays a huge role in the degree to which we are successful in what we do and for other people as well.
Put More Energy Into Rewarding Behaviors We Want:
Society teaches us to focus on the incorrect responses and correct or punish those. Instead, with clicker training, we learn to focus on and reward the behaviors we want from our dog. The more often those behaviors are rewarded at the right time, the more often they will occur and the stronger they become. How often are we rewarded many times in a day? Wouldn’t if feel better if we were rewarded more? We can start the change with our dog and it will build to positively affecting the people around you! Family, health-care workers, retail staff and others will feel the change and respond to it.
Break Behaviors and Tasks into Smaller Pieces:
Every problem can be divided into tiny achievable steps. There is a saying: “Yard by yard, Life is Hard. Inch by Inch, It’s a Cinch!” (Unknown) Every behavior, task, challenge or problem can be divided into tiny achievable steps. We just have to take the time to break them down and then do them. This process speeds learning and reduces the roadblocks to learning new things and refining known skills. And yes, applies to your life as a whole!
Learn What True Partnership Is:
True partnership is taking turns following the lead of another that we trust. By using the principle of clicker training to create a partnership of trust, we can become more of a whole together than if we are separate. Dogs have a different skill set than we do. Those dog skills complement our human skills. We need to trust our dog to lead when he has the expertise. Other people have different skill sets. We need to learn to build partnerships with them too.
Shifts Our Whole Approach to Life Towards the Positive.
Clicker training helps us understand our dogs and ourselves better. Anyone who embraces the philosophy has a shift towards being more positive in life. It starts by being more positive to our dogs and expands to being more positive towards other people in our life. The negatives still happen, but focussing more on the positives reduces the chronic stress that is detrimental to our physical and emotional health.
Learning is Lifelong:
This is probably the most important lesson! We are never there yet. There is always one more task to teach our service dog or one more thing for us to learn. That seeking of knowledge and skills is what keeps us moving forward. Learning is fun!
I invite you to learn these lessons. Give clicker training a try!
Want to get Inspired?
Books to Read
Reaching the Animal Mind by Karen Pryor -Karen shares her personal experiences with clicker training to show what is possible with clicker training. It is inspiring, easy to read, enjoyable and each chapter has video links of examples!
On My Mind by Karen Pryor- This is a thoroughly readable series of essays about her personal views on clicker training.
Don’t Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor-This small books helps you to understand the learning theory. She uses great people and animal examples. Again, it is written for the layperson to understand.
Videos
To get started all you really need is a marker sound and a handful of small soft treats. Check out this video to see what other simple things you can use:
Equipment
Jump right in with teaching simple behaviors your dog already does.
Capturing
This video introduces the proper technique of clicker training. The specific example of eye contact, but you can use “Wait”, nose target.
Your first session
Here is an example of learning to read dog language during training:
Jessie shows signs of stress
