OzVet

So, I’ve begun clicker training with Ginger, my parent’s sweet, smart 3-year-old Brittany who has had very little formal obedience training. (Prior to beginning clicker training, she was fairly well mannered, as your average pet dog goes. She could sit, shake, walk on a leash and knew what parts of the house she could/couldn’t go. However, none of these behaviors were 100% reliable, especially when distractions were presented. She’d stay out of the entryway, unless someone was at the door, and walking on a leash required a pinch/prong collar. Also, she did not have a reliable come, even in the house when no distractions were present.)

She’s caught on super fast, and has made really good progress in her first 5 days of clicker training. We’ve kept the sessions short, no longer than 4-5 minutes, but have been doing 3-5 session per day.

We started out by charging the clicker, working on a bit of basic targeting, and getting her sit super good. We also got the down command super. Before, down almost always had to be accompanied by luring and/or physically moving the dog. Now, I say down, and she hits the floor. Super fast. And with her tail wagging.

We’ve also been working on come, because it would be nice if she knew how to do this well, especially since she gets out every now and then and is too fast to chase. We started out playing the Come game with Jay and me. (This is the Come game.) Boy was she confused at first! Jay hadn’t done any clicker training with her, so she wasn’t about to leave me and go see if he might have anything. So, we backed up a bit and started with Jay and me standing together. We’d wait for her to come and then click and reward. Then, we’d throw another treat halfway across the kitchen so she had to go get it. When she came back to us, Jay would click and reward her. Pretty quickly she learned that Jay was good for treats as well. The we moved to standing apart again, and later on added a cue. Now, she’ll come running in the backyard whenever I call. However, I still don’t think she’d be reliable out of the yard.

Today we started on loose leash walking, as this would be really nice for her to learn how to do. She also finally figured out how her Buster Cube works. Maybe finally is a bad word, as we only introduced the Buster Cube yesterday. (But boy was she confused yesterday!) I did take some video of her playing with the Buster Cube, I’ll try and post that sometime soon.