Pet Owners - Clicker Training?

[barbgirl1999]

Hello all!

I'm curious if anyone on the arena has attempted or been successful with clicker training their pets?  I have ordered a couple of clickers from Amazon and am just waiting for them to come in, along with a book of pointers, and I've been watching videos for weeks on YouTube...I think I'm ready to give it a try with my rabbits.

Apparently people have had success with ALL kinds of animals: cats, dogs, rabbits, birds, guinea pigs, even FISH.

So, has anyone here tried it?  I'd love to hear your success stories (or NOT so successful stories, lol!)

[Chaosette]

Ouuuuu this is my specialty! I used to work with service dogs doing clicker training, and now I just help out my friends and stuff when I can. If you ever have any questions feel free to PM me!
I find it's just the most fantastic, positive way to train an animal because they truly cme to understand what you're asking them to do, by creating the behaviour themselves. It encourages creativity and intelligence and work ethic in so many ways ouuu  I just love it! And it helps build such a. Positive safe relationship with your pet.
And there's also no way to really mess up too badly, and it's certainly impossible to negatively impact your pet if you mess up. You might confuse them a little, at worst.
Have fun! YouTube has some fantastic examples of how to get the most out of clicker training and you can see dogs doing some crazy amazing stuff. Watching videos can really help you learn the more complicated problem of timing the click. Look for people training  service dogs... They're really brilliant at it.

[Heartcease]

I am intrigued by this, I never heard of it!  Following!

[barbgirl1999]

Ouuuuu this is my specialty! I used to work with service dogs doing clicker training, and now I just help out my friends and stuff when I can. If you ever have any questions feel free to PM me!
I find it's just the most fantastic, positive way to train an animal because they truly cme to understand what you're asking them to do, by creating the behaviour themselves. It encourages creativity and intelligence and work ethic in so many ways ouuu  I just love it! And it helps build such a. Positive safe relationship with your pet.
And there's also no way to really mess up too badly, and it's certainly impossible to negatively impact your pet if you mess up. You might confuse them a little, at worst.
Have fun! YouTube has some fantastic examples of how to get the most out of clicker training and you can see dogs doing some crazy amazing stuff. Watching videos can really help you learn the more complicated problem of timing the click. Look for people training  service dogs... They're really brilliant at it.

Thanks!  I am glad to hear that it's not just random clicker-selling websites saying how great it is, lol!  I am pretty excited to get my clickers in and give it a try with my boys...They're all smart little guys, so I am very optimistic.  I may set up my webcam and make a few videos once we get started.

[DaffyDilly]

I do it with Daffy (horse) admittedly not always with the greatest success! But he definitely enjoys it, and at 22 he still loves learning new things.

What I tend to struggle with is breaking down the behaviour that I want. For example, on and off over the course of about 4 years I've tried to teach him to take a rubber ring (the dog toy sort) from my hand, and place it onto the top of a traffic cone. It serves no obvious purpose other than being something to do. He will pick up the ring from my hand and hold it a little while, and separately from that he will touch (target) a traffic cone. The hard part for me is connecting those two behaviours together - getting him to keep the ring in his mouth whilst moving on to the next action. I'm obviously asking wrong because he is very clever and quick to grasp things.

[Katika]

I've worked professionally with animals for the past 12 years (everything from rescues, to military working dogs, and across several species of domestic, exotic and livestock animals) and have only attempted clicker training twice for two "special case" animals.  One of them was actually afraid of the click, and the other one never connected the click to the reward, so much as a "Oh yeah, give her my attention."

Maybe I do it wrong or something?  My training philosophy is 99.5% positive reinforcement through treat, verbal and physical praise with that last 0.5% being a physical blocking or a verbal "AH-AH" sound as a correction, and that's always worked well for me.

I'm by no means trying to discourage you from clicker training, but for whatever reason, it didn't work for me :/  I'm not sure if it's because I tend to relate more clearly with animals as opposed to people (and thus, I personally prefer a more direct form of communication with them, instead of "bridging" behavior with reward) or what.  I've seen other trainers do fantastic things through clicker training, though, and I've always seen very happy animals on the other end of this method

[kaoskat]

I've never actually used clickers. I've never had a need for them.

[PandoraFox]

My dad gives dog training classes and he's been teaching people how to work with a clicker for a while now.
I'm no expert by a long shot, but from what I have seen the the biggest thing that goes wrong when people try it is timing as Chaosette said.
You need to click the exact moment they're showing the behavior. By the time you go "Oh, wait! That's what I wanted!" you're too late.
It's the speed and precision that helps the animals learn so very fast.

Also clickers are convenient, but if your animal turns out to be afraid of it, any other type of noise maker that allows for the speedy reaction is fine. As long as there's a noise to help the animals figure out which behavior is wanted.

Good luck! I've never seen it used on rabbits before, but I'm sure they'll do great! I'm curious to see what you'll teach them.

[Bergamot]

I accidentally clicker trained my cat.

We introduced her to the laser pointer one day. The red dot became her favorite thing ever. She quickly associated her best, most elusive, tiniest friend ever with the clicky stick.

Now, whenever she sees that you're holding something that even remotely looks and sounds like the laser pointer, she starts looking around for the red dot. She waits for you to release the red dot so that she might chase it.

She now gets very emotional about clicking pens and mechanical pencils.

[Corona]

I've seen it done with horses successfully but mostly dogs. Where I work a lot of people bring in their dogs for us to watch with different training styles and the clicker training works well. I see it mostly with dogs that have really short attention spans.

[melodys_angel]

Let us know how it goes

[SunPony]

I've used it for some behaviors with my dog.  It was REALLY useful for training "walk on a loose leash."  She was like, "oh, THAT is what you wanted!"  For some things it is just faster to show her what I want, because she is so cued in to me (any human, really).  I don't think a rabbit would want to be shown what to do, though, so I don't think you would run into that problem. 

I also clicker trained one of my Guinea pigs to sit up on her back feet, so I'm sure it could work with a rabbit!  Aren't they supposed to be brighter than G-pigs?  Good luck!

Oh, one of my fave aspects of clicker training is targeting or target training.  That is how I taught my G-pig, and I used it with my dog for certain tricks, too.  I bet it would be a good technique to use for your rabbits!

[rosierjay]

we used clicker training with our dog, and now if you snap your fingers she does exactly what you say.
not sure if that's how it's suppose to be, but it works for us.
still has trouble on a leash though. could be cuz it's winter 9 months out of the year... grrr cold.

[barbgirl1999]

I also clicker trained one of my Guinea pigs to sit up on her back feet, so I'm sure it could work with a rabbit!  Aren't they supposed to be brighter than G-pigs?  Good luck!

Oh, one of my fave aspects of clicker training is targeting or target training.  That is how I taught my G-pig, and I used it with my dog for certain tricks, too.  I bet it would be a good technique to use for your rabbits!

Oooh, it worked on your piggy too?  That's awesome, I have 3 G-pigs. 

I'm really looking forward to starting it with my oldest Holland Lop, he's super-smart already, he's a handful because he's so smart, lol.  And I have a brand new Flemish Giant that I want to train as well.  I'd actually like to try it on ALL of my animals...rabbits and non.

Thanks for all the tips so far!

[iluvponiez]

It's very helpful with bunnies.