The ‘Click’ Clique
Clicker training is expanding its dog-only status as the go-to method for training to include horses, rabbits, llamas and even cats
Image courtesy Karen Pryor
B.F. Skinner called it operant conditioning. Dog trainers around the country call it clicker training.
Skinner, a renowned psychologist who died in 1990, developed the notion of operant conditioning, the theory that learning happens when behaviors are reinforced. Today, dog trainers and owners around the country use that – plus a little $2 gadget – to train their dogs. And cats. And other creatures.
Clickers, little plastic boxes that make a sharp metal clicking sound when they are squeezed, have been an accepted form of animal training for more than half a century.
Karen Pryor, who studied behavioral psychology and marine biology, was one of the first. She used the clicker and operant conditioning principles in the 1960s when she worked as a dolphin trainer in Hawaii.
“There was no history of operant training for dolphins,” Pryor says, “but I had studied ethology, how animals learn in nature, and I began using positive reinforcement with the dolphins.” Even she was surprised at how well operant conditioning with carefully timed cues worked on the animals in her charge.
Animal trainers soon found the clicker worked with horses, rabbits, cats and llamas. Pryor continued to study its use and in the 1980s wrote a book about positive reinforcement called “Don’t Shoot the Dog” (Ringpress Books, 3rd Ed., 2002).
“I wrote that book about people, as a standard text for psychology, but the publisher gave it a joke-y title, and dog people began picking it up,” she says.
Pryor began to get invitations to seminars for dog trainers, and by the early 90s, she had coined the term “clicker training” for the little device used.
“We started using the clicker and started selling it,” she says. “It gave dog people a little talisman. It made it clear how to think about the training.”
Today, Pryor is best known for her company, Karen Pryor Clicker Training and the accompanying Web site, www.clickertraining.com. Based in Waltham, Mass., Pryor’s company sells books and training products, and has just opened a dog trainer program in nine states – California, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington.
The concept of clicker training is simple: A dog trainer or owner clicks the moment the dog does something they want – sit, stay or even do a trick that’s not part of traditional obedience training. In the beginning, the click is followed by a treat and a command. Later, the treat is unnecessary, and after that, the clicker can be put away.
“Instead of correcting, you offer positive reinforcement – a click and a treat or something else that the dog really likes,” Pryor says. Why a metal clicker instead of a spoken word or some other sound? “You can use a short, sharp word, but the dog will learn about 50 percent slower. Whistles work, but many people use them for sheep dogs or field dogs.”
So the trainer clicks and the dog responds. The speed at which a dog will learn with this method amazes people, Pryor says. And its effectiveness was obvious, so it wasn’t much of a leap to transfer that method to people.
“About 10 years ago, a gymnastics coach who had been training her horse with a clicker began using it in her day job to help children identify body movement,” Pryor says. “The children loved it.”
Parents objected. Wasn’t the coach treating their children like animals? “But we knew it worked, so we came up with a name for the training – teaching with acoustic guidance, or tagging. “They loved it,” Pryor says.
Dog owners and trainers aren’t as sensitive about the vocabulary. They just know the clicker works. Andrea Bratt Frick is a trainer in Santa Barbara, Calif., (http://k9sbehave.com) who trains with a clicker.
Bratt Frick believes clicker training is a perfect approach for most dogs, even dogs with aggression problems or dogs that have been trained with other methods.
“Positive reinforcement is very successful for dogs that need to be retrained. And for families with children, it’s a good method as well,” she says. “Other methods only work with one person in the family. Children can learn to use the clicker and work with their dogs just like their parents.”
The key to clicker training, Pryor says, “is its consistency. There’s just no question in the dog’s mind.”
Or the cat’s mind either. It turns out that clicker training is also effective for cats. Pryor and others detail on her Web site how they trained their cats to wave, give the “kitty high five” and even play the piano. Yes, play the piano.
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