I started clicker training with my 8 week old lab yesterday. Wow, pretty impressive. But I do have a few questions. 1. I tried taking her for a walk in the backyard and walk away from her when she wasn't paying attention. When she raced back to me c and t. This worked well. But after a few tries, she was glued to my legs. So I decided to take advantage of this and work on heel. She did great, but I did it a little differently. I tried throwing the treat out away from me, but she could not track it and find it. So instead I walked around frequently changing directions and c and t on each turn. I did this for about 2 minutes. It was pretty amazing how well she heeled, but I have never done this before and did not want to mess anything up. Is this okay? 2. Can I start getting my kids involved in clicker training? If so, what is the best way? Sorry for the book.
Hello there, how great that you are enjoying clicker training! It's a great thing to do with a dog. It's fine to use a clicker to get a dog to walk at heel - it's also fine to throw the treats. But it's best that you have in your mind a very clear criteria for what it is that you are clicking for. So is it 2 steps at heel? 3 steps? 20 steps? The dog just more or less by your side, or exactly in line with your knee etc. The real power in the clicker is the accuracy with which you can capture behaviour, and then up your 'criteria' so the dog works just a little bit harder for the click, and this way you work your way to a finished behaviour. Also, the click can become very powerful to a clicker trained dog. I myself would not let children have a clicker - it's too important to me, and too powerful to allow kids to use. If they want to get involved in training, you could let them use a marker word instead (something you don't use yourself for more serious training, perhaps). Something like "great!" or "good!" - unless you need the accuracy of the clicker, this works fine.
I definitely wouldn't let children use the clicker. I've only just let my hubby have one and he's using it for something that I'm not training Dexter to do. To get the distance from you, you could pop the treat onto the floor in front of Braden and whist she's eating it move a few paces away then encourage her to you, click, put the food on the floor again and repeat. Or throw it just a very small distance away from you. I'd probably feed one piece to her first, then put one down or at a little distance and say find it or whatever you choose as you want the recall to mean coming to you and staying with you until you release her or keep her with you. Sorry I'm a bit long winded with my explainations
