Training Suggestions? Marking Incorrect Behaviors?

Goggle said:
I guess patience is the key!! And I have been reading alot of good things about clicker training on here and am interested to try it out. Can you just buy the clicker at most pet stores?
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Yes you can. Usually they are up by the registers because they are small items. If you don't see one, ask someone.

One more question as well- do you treat every time he/she offers the right behaviour?
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Offer the treat when they offer the behavior you ASK for. If they offer a behavior you didn't request, which they will do once they figure things out, they don't get a treat.

Over time you will fade out the click/treat combination as the behavior becomes ingrained. I will still, occasionally put my dog in sit, down, and/or stay positions with a click/treat just to show him that he doesn't know when he may get a special reward even for a simple command.
 
Silaria said:
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Over time you will fade out the click/treat combination as the behavior becomes ingrained. I will still, occasionally put my dog in sit, down, and/or stay positions with a click/treat just to show him that he doesn't know when he may get a special reward even for a simple command.
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Yep Justice knows his behaviors backwards and forwards. He is a very advanced good obedience dog and he still get food rewards for his behaviors. Its more like 1 every 20-40 behaviors rather then 2-8 that Diva is on.:smile2: Praise is the main motivator for Justice now though.
 
Don't you worry we get upset with ourselves all the time.. I am sure it is normal, the more we care and want to do right by our dogs...
I feel it's not the dog it is ME haahah ala last agility foundation class.. My trainer said, uhm.. if you get upset poor Toffee gets upset, lol Oh and she said stop being frustrated, took me 5 years to be that coordinated with treats and clicks, etc etc.. hahaha I was trying to practice shaping the behaviour for a front cross.. she made it look so easy.. well I looked like a dork, when I tried the same thing, LOL

(I reminded myself of Jan, who claims to have NO coordination lol)
Good thing Toffee is patient with me, too, lol

Clickers are available at stores, if not clickertraining.com or ebay is where I got my ergonomic one, which I love.
lso can vary the treats or I use dogfood, so he has to work for half his food, everyday... the other half he gets raw when he gets fed once a day
 
Toffee's Mom said:
Don't you worry we get upset with ourselves all the time.. I am sure it is normal, the more we care and want to do right by our dogs...
I feel it's not the dog it is ME haahah ala last agility foundation class.. My trainer said, uhm.. if you get upset poor Toffee gets upset, lol Oh and she said stop being frustrated, took me 5 years to be that coordinated with treats and clicks, etc etc.. hahaha I was trying to practice shaping the behaviour for a front cross.. she made it look so easy.. well I looked like a dork, when I tried the same thing, LOL

(I reminded myself of Jan, who claims to have NO coordination lol)
Good thing Toffee is patient with me, too, lol

Clickers are available at stores, if not clickertraining.com or ebay is where I got my ergonomic one, which I love.
lso can vary the treats or I use dogfood, so he has to work for half his food, everyday... the other half he gets raw when he gets fed once a day
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Oh my 99.9% of the time its me. Ember is like that if I get upset at myself she is upset. I didn't realize that for a long time until someone pointed it out. Diva just tells me to get my act together.

As for as uncoordinated, I'm the poster child. Took me forever to learn front croses I did tons of them last weekend and it looked like I knew what I was doing.:lol:
 
Just wanted to thank everyone for their advice. We have been practicing his sits and downs for the last couple weeks and I have seen great improvement. I am no longer touching him to get him to sit and if he doesn't do it on the first command I will turn away from him and "ignore" him for a few minutes. He really doesn't like this and usually performs the command pretty quickly the next time!

I really think the problem was that I was letting him get away with it and letting myself get into bad habits so thanks everyone for pointing out my mistakes and helping me to correct them!

I have also just started clicker training. We loaded the clicker last night and then practiced with the commands that he already knows. Wow did his responses become fast! I am excited to try teaching him some new tricks and commands with the clicker.
 
OHHHHH I am SO happy you jumped into this 'new' world of the clicker.. it is so much FUN.. :biggrin2:

I just thought the difference is amazing when I first used that clicker! I had always wanted to try it out but never did, because I was too confused about it, lol
Smudge had posted a video of teaching something and I finally tried it myself, that's why I love this Forum :) Normal people sharing experiences etc etc... we all learn
 
I am so glad that you are talking about clickers here and I a have tried it in the past but was never sure I was doing it the correct way... so you give command get correct command click and then treat? Do I have the right order? I would love to try this with Zak.
 
Sumac3890 said:
I am so glad that you are talking about clickers here and I a have tried it in the past but was never sure I was doing it the correct way... so you give command get correct command click and then treat? Do I have the right order? I would love to try this with Zak.
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Actually you CATCH the dog doing something you like.. you do not give a command... so at first they look at you, you click and then give the treat within a sec or two. This only works if you loaded the clicker first, which means they know a click means a good thing :)
Loading a clicker you click and treat about 60 repetitions, they say... but I don't think they did that with Shelties, I swear only takes ten at the most, LOL At this time you can also wait to click until they look at your face and click and treat, so you're shaping the behaviour of them looking at ya... Still you do NOT speak (my trainer insists I think of invisible tape over my mouth... lol)

Then you wait to see what your dog does.. normally at this point they start doing all kinds of antics trying to get you to click that thing! You may see that Zak will make a move to sit on his own, in which case you click as soon as you see him starting to be putting his butt down... and treat. Next times you only click when the butt is actually touching the ground.. do that a few times, and all of this NO talking... (hardest part for me) Other than good boy, maybe when you click...

THEN you do, what is called adding a label.. you only give the behaviour a command when he is SOLID at doing it for ya in the sessions. Then you say sit AS he does it, click and treat..
Voila two or less training session you'll get the fastest sits you've ever seen, lol

Second thing I learned to keep training session short and sweet, 5 to 10 minutes each time, no more for me and Toffee...

Also Check out clickertraining.com http://www.clickertraining.com/basics
 
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