We have been training our lab with clicker training and she really catches on quickly. She will do anything for a treat. My main question is this: does the click always have to be followed by a treat or can it be followed by another reward such as praise or a few tosses of her ball? Is it click/treat or click/reward? For our training sessions, I always do click/treat but to teach her to generalize, I would like to--at times--fade out the treat so she knows to obey commands even if she might not get a treat (variable reinforcement, right?)
You can certainly use a different type of reward, such as a toy, as long as it's of high enough value to the dog. Using something just because you think she should like it isn't going to work. Praise alone is probably not going to cut it and could reduce the effectiveness of your clicker. The idea is to fade the clicker over time, so you're upping your requirements of what you're after and not treating every five seconds. Once a behaviour is very solid on cue, you shouldn't need to click every time.
In fact, sometimes a tennis ball (if she likes that enough) is better than a treat. For example, when working at distance, you want to be able to throw the reward to the dog, because you don't necessarily want them to return to you, and it's far easier to throw a ball over a distance than it is a small treat.
