I signed Polaris, our 14-week-old puppy up for Puppy Kindergarten last night. The school uses the clicker method, or operant conditioning.
Basically, good behavior is rewarded with a click and a treat and bad behavior is somewhat ignored. As an example, if a dog is jumping, you turn your back on it and ignore the dog until all feet are on the ground. The moment that happens, you click and treat. After a while, you stop rewarding the feet on the floor and only reward when the dog sits. The idea is that the dog will keep trying different things to get the treat.
My older dog was trained with the traditional punish/reward method. If you wanted her to sit, you said the command, and if she didn’t, you popped her choke collar gently until she did, and then rewarded.
The new trainer says that no punishments will be used. You say the command and then wait until the dog obeys. If he doesn’t obey, the only punishment is not getting the treat.
My husband is somewhat skeptical. When I explained the method after coming home last night, he grinned and said, Cartman style, that it sounded “like a bunch of tree-hugging hippie crap” to him. He prefers the traditional punish/reward style, saying that it seems to him that it would work quicker than simply rewarding selected behaviors.
Have any of you trained solely with the clicker method? What were the results? Did you find it easier or more difficult than other methods?
(On a side note to those of you who have given me advice before-- Polaris’ behavior problems have lessened considerably. She no longer chews on me, and she’s accepting her subordinate role much better.)