For a very good guide to all sorts of dog training processes and dog behavior challenges, I use and recommend Clickertraining ...that link goes to the description of this terrific ebook you download immediately, wherever you are! -- Rosana

Clickertraining-200

I was pleased to discover a new book on clicker training. Actually it’s an ebook, which to my eyes is even better because you can download it instantly after purchase and be reading it within a few minutes, no matter where you live, it can have links embedded in the text, and it’s way more ecological. Clickertraining: the 4 Secrets of Becoming a Supertrainer is by Morten Egtvedt & Cecilie Koeste, a couple with a lot of experience in clicker training dogs. (Clicking on the image or on the title above takes you to their website.)

At 213 pages, it will take you more than a few minutes to read it, but that’s with wide margins and big print. (You can read it on your computer, or print it out. I soon realized it was such a useful book to refer to that I would want it on my bookshelf, so I printed it out and put it in a 3-4ing binder, where I could take a few pages out at a time.) In the beginning, Morten and Cecilie do tell you, ” We can’t deliver miracles –just  pass on the principles of effective dog training. You have to be prepared to devote time and energy…”  That’s true of anything worthwhile, but I’ll add that once you master the basic principles of clicker training dogs, you have a very useful tool for the rest of your life.

I enjoyed their analogy that reading the book without trying out clicker training is like buying sheet music and not playing it. They further extend this analogy to say that you can use the exercises they provide as things to improvise on, as a jazz musician would. They also predict that you will enjoy the process, and that any mistakes you make in the beginning won’t matter.. they are an inevitable part of your learning something new.

I laughed out loud at the “For the Dog” section of the introduction. Here’s just one little bit: “Clicker training an owner really is rather simple. It’s all about
making the owners click, because every time they do that we get something that we want.” It stretched my mind – in a very enjoyable way – to look at clicker training from the dog’s point of view.

So What Is In Clickertraining: the 4 Secrets of Becoming a Supertrainer?

The book starts by telling you what clickertraining is and isn’t.  I didn’t expect to learn much from this section and was pleasantly surprised when I did. One point was that since clicker training has become so widely used, you don’t necessarily know how people train if they say they use clickers. They could be using the methods originally developed by Karen Pryor, their own (jazz) variations on them, or something not that different from the more heavy-handed “ya gotta dominate” approaches with some clicks thrown in.

The book naturally divides into three parts:

The first chapters explain clicker training in general. You may not be familiar with everything on this list, but they explain things clearly:

  • What is clicker training?
  • Positive and negative reinforcement
  • The 4 secrets of becoming a supertrainer
  • Find an effective reinforcer!
  • Conditioned reinforcers
  • Training techniques
  • Target training
  • Stimulus control
  • Backchaining
  • The retrieve
  • Generalization
  • Crossover dogs and horses
  • Five common syndromes

The second section is a very useful guide to 30 specific training  situations and tricks:

  1. Charging the conditioned reinforcer
  2. Eye contact: look at me
  3. Targeting
  4. Following you
  5. Loose-leash walking
  6. The recall
  7. The sit
  8. The down
  9. The stand
  10. OK!
  11. Offering you to put the collar on
  12. Handling
  13. Polite greetings – for the eager dog
  14. Polite greetings – for the warier dog
  15. Waiting alone
  16. Crate training
  17. Puppy biting
  18. Getting used to different environments
  19. Holding an object (retrieving)
  20. The retrieve
  21. Switching the lights off and on
  22. Shutting drawers
  23. Riding in a wheelbarrow
  24. Go to a family member – the postman game
  25. Go to mat when there’s someone at the door
  26. Getting the newspaper out of the mailbox
  27. Doing the laundry
  28. The spin
  29. Choosing the right tool
  30. Getting a soda from the fridge

The ebook ends with some last words, references, and more. I could say more but this is long enough. You can go to the website of Clickertraining: the 4 Secrets of Becoming a Supertrainer by clicking (think I’ll skip the obvious pun) on the picture of Morten Egtvedt, Cecilie Koeste, and their dogs:

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