The History of Clicker Training and What is Clicker Training

By Patrick Mountainbranch

What Is Clicker Training

Clicker Training is a method of training animals, mostly dogs. It first were discovered and tested on rats, which were a success, so scientists started to use it on dolphins and pigeons, and then later on dogs. It's named "Clicker Training" because the tool that's used is a "Clicker", which sounds just like a click when you're pushing it, this marks out for the training animal whether it have done well or not. This technique is used to train the police's K9 units, but also the normal "household dog".

B.F. Skinner

B.F. Skinner were an American psychologist, and it was he that first identified this technology, and described it to his students. Skinner didn't start to use this technique though, it was two of his first students, Marian and Keller Breland, that first saw the possibilities of training animals.

At World War II, Mr and Mrs Breland started a company called "Animal Behavior Enterprises", where they started to train pigeons. Most of the bird shows at that time were with birds that weren't allowed to fly wherever they want, because if they would have been allowed, they'd just fly away. Though there was an exception, the Brelands. They used the "Clicker training" method, so they could control where the birds would fly, so they were the first ones in the world having a free-flying bird show.

Keller Breland died at 1965, so Marian got married with a Dolphin Scientist that works for the navy, called Bob Bailey, who joined Marian in her researching work. They started to train other animals, like dolphins, whom they learned to locate their trainers many miles away from shore, at the sea. They also trained different species of birds, like Ravens, who they thaught to carry a camera, got directed by lasers to fly to whichever specific window the trainer wanted, and taking picture of whatever the trainer wanted. Another example is Gulls, who they thaught how to locate swimmers, and could even locate life-rafts far off-shore.

Clicker Training: Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages with Clicker Training

"Clicker Training" is all about letting your animal know when they have done good, so the animal knows that's the exact behavior that's right, or good. As an example, if you're teaching your dog to sit, the exact moment he sits down, he needs to know that he have done well. If you're shouting "Good dog!", when the dog hears that, he might have changed behavior, such as standing up again, or have lay down on the floor, which he then will think is the right behavior. Also the "Clicker" got the exact same tone, every single time. If you're shouting "good dog!" ten times, your voice wont have the same tone every time, so it will take even more time for your dog to understand that your tone in the voice doesn't matter, but he also have to understand that when you're saying "Bad dog!", he have done wrong or bad.

With the clicker though it's a lot easier, since the "Clicker" can let out whatever sound you want it to, that the animal can understand, and sounds that's clear. However, it's not just dogs that's getting trained, and with other animals there are often other Training devices, like dolphins who normally have a whistle, and Goldfishes doesn't even have a sound, it's normally a flashlight.

Disadvantages with Clicker Training

You get so hooked and will never stop training Your dog and Your dog will never stop training. But, that's not a disadvantage if You have all the time in the world.

Overall, Clicker Training is a very precise and effective method of training dogs than correction based dog training is.

Patrick K. Mountainbransch adopted Clicker Training a couple of Years ago. Under 2007 he participated in a one year long clicker training course and will now start share his knowledge to all dog owners and dog trainers