Clicker Training

I attended a make-up class this past weekend for a rally class I missed on our trip. We had a new instructor and the class was the first one for this particular session: Advanced Competitive Rally. They were kind enough to allow me to attend as I am not competitive and as a team, Bella and I are way below advanced.

The instructor, however, did nothing with rally, but worked us for an hour on how to use the clicker. For those of you who use a clicker regularly, you probably scratch your head at those of us who complain of being "clicker disabled." I have to admit, I am. Totally. Clicker disabled. I click at the wrong time, I click and don't treat, I treat and don't click, I treat when I shouldn't. It's an embarrassment.

But this class was great! Initially all she requested of us was to click when our dogs reacted with a box. She didn't care what they did, how they did it or whether it was the same reaction over and over again. Sniff, look, paw, back away, step on it—anything deserved a click and treat. We did that for two minutes, than stopped and let the dogs rest. Repeat.

For a new spin on it, she asked us to click at any new behavior. If they looked at the box, click and treat. But if they looked at it again, don't click and treat—wait until they offered a new behavior. Bella knew looking at the box got a treat, so she was confused that repeated glancing at the box didn't bring a reward. You could see the wheels spinning! Finally she pawed the box. Bingo! Click and treat! She nosed the box. Click and treat!

We did this exercise a number of times also. Always a duration of two minutes with a nice break between exercises.

The next exercise required us to use a hog pan. The pan was turned over with the bottom facing up. (The bottom was also covered with non-skid tape.) For this exercise, the instructor asked us to decide on what we wanted our dog to do with the pan. A student had brought her own bucket and she wanted her dog to knock it over. The rest of us used the hog pans.

One owner was only looking for her dog to put her front paws on it. Another wanted their dog's front paws on it and for the dog, keeping his paws on the pan, to rotate around the pan. Yet another owner wanted her dog's front paws on it and the dog to stand still. For me, I initially wanted Bella to put her front feet on it and eventually her back feet too. From there, I wanted her to sit. Ta-da! She did it! Smart puppy!

Yet another break. The final clicker exercise was for the dog to shake paws. However, we were to get close enough so when the dog's paw came down it would touch our knee. When there was contact: click and treat. Eventually the idea was that we would walk backward as the dog walked towards us tapping our knees with their paw, left paw to right knee, right to left. Bella was pooped. She could barely figure out how to shake and luckily the teacher recognized it before I did. She told me to just let Bellie rest.

Our final exercise was a five minute down with us wandering around and greeting each other. Bella almost made it. She was good until someone greeted me with a squeaky voice. That's okay. She'd worked hard in class and squeaking is so enticing. She went back down and stayed there for the remainder. All in all, a great class for the both of us. Seattle Agility and their instructors rock!