I ordered and received a new Clicker Training book, written by Karen Pryor. I’ve been using clicker on Bella since she came to live with us at 8 weeks, and I must admit the training is going very well. With clicker she learned to turn, touch hand and touch toy in 5 minutes each. Considering her independent personality and breed characteristics, her recall is quite good and lead walking is getting there. I was just wondering, how many of you that ONLY clicker train you dogs, achieved 100% obedience?

Depends on what you mean by a) 100% and b) obedience!

There are several top Obedience/WT competitors who ONLY use clicker training for their dogs eg Suzanne Jaffa who has a dual champion Ob Ch and WT Ch ASD with whom she won the dog obedience competition and Crufts last year.

Obedience is not the same as obedient (in the context of dogs).

a) 100% - to respond every single time when asked to do something...well lets leave some room for odd error - let’s make it 99%
b) Obedience - to respond to all commands taught, no matter how many distractions, to make certain behaviour as the only existent option e.g. walking nicely on the lead at all times, walking next to you off the lead...

Aha, now the whole point of operant conditioning (clicker training) is that there are ALWAYS options.

Dogs do what works, so provided YOU have trained the dog effectively and efficiently you will increase the likelihood of some behaviour and decrease the likelihood of others.

It is entirely in your hands................

[QUOTE=smokeybear;1061761049]Depends on what you mean by a) 100% and b) obedience!

There are several top Obedience/WT competitors who ONLY use clicker training for their dogs eg Suzanne Jaffa who has a dual champion Ob Ch and WT Ch ASD with whom she won the dog obedience competition and Crufts last year.

Agreed and my bitch being another....!!

[QUOTE=Twiggy;1061761084]

Quote:

Originally Posted by smokeybear Depends on what you mean by a) 100% and b) obedience!

Do you compete with your bitch as well? What I find is that Bella knows exactly when we are doing training and when we are not doing it. She will do everything in the training session with me but not as much when out on the walk although every walk includes some form of training.

[QUOTE=Sammy123;1061761099]#

Sounds like you have classically conditioned your dog to behave like this......

[QUOTE=smokeybear;1061761111]Can you elaborate on thit please?

Classical conditioning is about associations.

Your dog associates X place with Y behaviour. The place where you normally train has become a predictor of what is going to happen.

This is why dogs need to be proofed so that they generalise behaviours eg the "he does it at home" cry heard by many a dog trainer. Ie you get dogs which "know" sit in the living room but not in the garden.

See it in riding school horses a lot, they automatically know when and where they walk, trot and canter irrespective of who is on their back!

As opposed to what?

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