Having spent about 18+ months walking our dog with a halti to prevent him pulling me around when he lunges after nice looking dogs on the other side of the street or away from buses and lorries etc, I decided last week i was fed up of it, and was going to try something different.
I went back to the normal lead and neck collar but started using a clicker to train.
After just one week, today he walked all the way into town and back on the lead without lunging at anything, and pretty much perfect heel all the way.
So nice and relaxing!
Now, can anyone who uses clickers tell me, do you need to continually reinforce with it or would you think after another week or so i wouldn't need to use it?
Also, I have been clicking and treating every time, should i start clicking and not treating sometimes, as with normal treat based training as taught in my puppy class, or is that confusing when employing the clicker?

And they say you cant teach an older dog new tricks...well done!
Nothing more to add as i dont use clickers

Remember what the clicker is for:

It marks the behaviour that you want
It tells the dog that it is over
It tells the dog reinforcement is coming

Therefore you must NEVER click without giving a reward otherwise you are basically lying; the clicker is a promise.

You can of course reinforce WITHOUT using a clicker.

The way you know you can remove the clicker is when the dog can achieve a minimum of 80% compliance and the behaviour is on cue etc.

If your dog has spent 18 months rehearsing a strategy that works, woudl you consider that a week or two of training is enough?

Hmmmmm

Probably not, but i am so impressed that it seems to have worked so quickly,  i will continue to work with it for as long as it takes, it's great that it has worked at all, i feel.

well done on your hard work.

I would have thought changing different habitats length of time before clicking etc before removing the clicker altogether.

Great to hear this, as I have 2 dogs that pull and I have to use a halti harness on both, I'm going to have a go at this!

I think you will need to perservere with the clicker for some time to come for loose lead walking.  To give you an idea of how long it may take, try the following experiment......teach your dog any simple behaviour using the clicker - a paw wave, or spin or something else that is quite inconsequential.  Work until you think you have that behaviour 100% and then do the following: ask for ten repetitions of that behaviour clicking and treating each time.  Then ask for ten reps of the behaviour ONLY treating and not clicking.  Then ask for ten reps whilst clicking but NOT treating.  Mark each behaviour and note how the behaviour deteriorates.  :-) This will also show you what is more important to your dog: the click or the treat!  You may get a suprise! Also, remember that the paw wave or whatever you select will be a new behaviour whereas your loose lead walking has a history and therefore will be at least ten times more difficult to establish!  Don't be too impatient and be grateful that he is no longer pulling you all over the place!  :-)

Have fun!

Then ask for ten reps whilst clicking but NOT treating.  Mark each behaviour and note how the behaviour deteriorates.  :-) This will also show you what is more important to your dog: the click or the treat!  You may get a suprise!

Erm, but the click ISN'T the reward in itself, the click means a reward is COMING -hence you must never click and NOT reward. The reward, of course, can be either a treat OR a game or similar. To just click without following up with a reward would be to undo all the clicker work as you're effectively telling the dog it no longer works.

You must be thrilled with how well your dog is learning.

Personally I'd carry on until I've had a few more walks with him doing whole walks on a loose lead. While doing that work out how often you are clicking and treating, for example, is it every 10 paces, every 20 seconds?

Then you can work out how to begin using the click and treat less. Say you usually do 10-12 paces and click/treat start doing it after 12-14 paces, if that goes well start doing 14-16 paces, and so on.

Eventually I'd aim to click and treat maybe once or twice during a walk to keep him thinking about it.

Never click and withhold the treat/reward. The reason dogs respond so well to clicker training is because they know for once what the sound means, every time, if you change what it means they'll soon stop believing its worth working for.

Erm, but the click ISN'T the reward in itself,

You would be surprised! :-) This is an exercise I did with Helen Philips at Learning about Dogs a while back.  It depends on the dog, what motivates them and how long they have been clicker training but for some it became apparent that the click was more important than the reward.  In other words, the behaviour patterns remained constant when clicked but deteriorated when just treated and not clicked.

This surprsed me and yes, it does go against all the standard advice of 'if you click, you must treat, even if you clicked for the wrong thing!'

I use the click successfully to reinforce a dog on point at a distance;  this is confirming to the dog that it is doing the right thing by maintaining a behaviour.  You could argue of course that the reward is the scent and maybe also the flush if permitted, but the point (no pun intended) I would like to make is that with some dogs the click becomes the significant element and not the treat.

Also, the idea of clicker training is not that the clicker should be used for ever and a day, but rather that both the click and the treat can/should be faded over time.  What I outlined in my post above is how I have been taught to establish whether a behaviour is ready for that fading.  It is a test to gauge the reaction of the dog and judge where you are in the training process.  I think that this is what the OP was after......advice as to when they could stop using the clicker. 

Yes, that is exactly what i wanted, thanks it's very interesting.

The click is the secondary reinforcer, the reward is the primary reinforcer, whether that reward is food, toys, scent whatever.  The most important thing in clicker training well any training is to be consistent and that's what makes clicker training so effective because it always means the same thing to the dog.

1) you've done the right thing
2) a reward is coming
3) the behaviour is finished

to not reward sometimes completely goes against the principle of clicker training.  Yes once the behaviour is learned you fade the clicker and them move onto a variable reward schedule but not until that behaviour is under stimulus control and completely on cue.  There are some dogs I'm sure that will continue to work for just the click when they are clicker savvy and if the reward for them is doing the exercises in the first place but they will be in the minority.  For most dogs that will not work and it isn't the point of clicker training.

Thanks for all the advice, but now i do feel a bit confused. It seems different people have different ways of doing this, and i will need to get more information before i stop using the clicker.
It's still going ok by the way, though yesterday wasn't as good as the day before, due to the rain (he finds the noise of traffic distracting as he is frightened of the lorries and busues, and bikes, this is worse on wet days) it was still an improvement on previous wet days.
At the moment i am walking for about 60 seconds between click and treat, though i do it more frequently if he seems to be losing it a bit, then extend again.

only thing that knocks the whole theory on the head is what happens the days you don't have a treat, toy , scent to hand?    Praise to me seems to be the best training tool.

only thing that knocks the whole theory on the head is what happens the days you don't have a treat, toy , scent to hand? 

On those days you don't use clicker training as you are lacking a vital ingredient of it. But the way most people use is to teach the dog to tug on the lead as a reward as the lead you will always have with you.

Hi RReeve
I think that Karenclynes and I are actually saying the same thing. 

Yes once the behaviour is learned you fade the clicker and them move onto a variable reward schedule but not until that behaviour is under stimulus control and completely on cue. 
Karen wrote the above and that is basically what I wrote (or intended to convey!) in my above posts.  The reason for originally suggesting that you taught your dog an inconsequential behaviour like a paw wave and then tried the exercise I outlined was that if you tried to fade the clicker too soon (as I guessed you may try and do!!) it wouldn't matter if that behaviour fell apart.  I was hoping that that would show you how long you need to keep going in order to cement a behaviour before it becomes fluent and reliable.

What I would say is that using a clicker for heel training is not easy at all as there are so many distractions and variables.........for instance, you click, but does the dog recognise that that is for the correct body position or because he had just advanced his front left paw or because he looked at the cat in the garden or because he looked up at you or what?  Are you using a target stick or some other form of targetting (eg back of hand)?

Hi Blue
No reason to stop clicker training if you get caught short without your customary food treat or run out whilst out and about!  A treat is a reward and most dogs have a hierarchy of rewards;  a game, food, a fuss, a kind word, a stroke, being allowed to scent, a free run, whatever.  Different dogs will value each of those differently.  If you don't have a bit of sausage to hand you can still click (to mark precisely the desired behaviour) and then follow up with a 'good boy' or a fondle of the ears or whatever. 

I'm afraid that I disagree with the quote below, although it is a common misconception that food and the clicker are inexorably tied together.......they need not be!
On those days you don't use clicker training as you are lacking a vital ingredient of it.

I am clicking when he is walking in the exact position i want.
I should say he was already walking well on the lead without pulling most of the time. He only tended to pull in the first few minutes of a walk, after that he would just trot along with a slack lead but not to heel and then suddenly lunge away from traffic, or towards friends (dog or human) etc.
I appreciate that he doesn't know whether i am clicking for his exact position or the other reasons you suggest, but nonetheless it is working so much more efficiently than any other method i have been shown, and i feel it is the immediacy of the click (praise) to the position, unlike if you just give a treat, he is distracted by the offer and moves out of position. Other methods, eg turning backwards etc, don't make him walk nicely in position, though they stop the 'pulling like a train' which was a problem in his puppy days.

I'm afraid that I disagree with the quote below, although it is a common misconception that food and the clicker are inexorably tied together.......they need not be!


Hi Gunner,

If that is the case why use the food or clicker at all then.

I personally find the whole thing silly. I train mine from puppies to come by calling their name  any nonsense a second attempt is made with a firm voice that usually does the trick..

You know what I never got that out of a book or anything it was the same principles my parents did with me :-D

Gunner said:I'm afraid that I disagree with the quote below, although it is a common misconception that food and the clicker are inexorably tied together.......they need not be!
"On those days you don't use clicker training as you are lacking a vital ingredient of it."

I don't see anywhere where I say that the reward has to be FOOD -in fact I do mention tugging on the lead as an alternative to a food or toy reward. What the reward is doesn't mater, all that matters is that the reward is relevant to the dog in question. :) The fact is still you do not click and then DON'T reward, as you will unlearn the dog. I don't use a clicker myself and have to be very careful as my clicker word is Good -so I can never say "Good dog" as to my dogs that means they have been clicked and they look for the reward. If the reward stops appearing after the click, the behaviour will also stop. It can vary a lot from dog to dog of course, some give up much sooner than others.

Blue asked:If that is the case why use the food or clicker at all then.

I personally find the whole thing silly. I train mine from puppies to come by calling their name  any nonsense a second attempt is made with a firm voice that usually does the trick..

Because you can NEVER be as precise with just giving a treat -you can with a clicker word, but you must understand that a click means the dog has done right and the exercise is finished. As soon as you have clicked, that's it, over. Hence you can click the exact moment the dog does right and it has to be the EXACT moment -not one second later. This means you can break exercises up into small parts. Say you teach a dog to come when called, and you just praise the dog when it is running toward you, or when it arrives to you. You could then, to use just one example,  end up with a dog that runs slowly to you. If doing it the clicker way, you can click when the dog does exactly what you want, such as when it has the right speed. I.e. a recall can be clicked for the decision to come, the act of coming, the speed, the arrival etc etc. By dividing everything up into small parts you get each tiny part right -that isn't possible if you just praise at the end of the exercise.

The point of clicker training is also that the dog always chooses what to do, it never sees it as a must -it's its own choice and hence it works better as anyone will be happier carrying tasks out through choice, not because they've been told to firmly.

I still read the whole thing and scratch my head :-) Sorry but I do..

Why would you teach a dog to Tug on the lead? confused now :-D   It's Ok I am happy to remain confused on this one :-D

You need to watch it Blue, to SEE the difference. I was 100% skeptical myself before I saw with my own eyes what could be achieved. :) I can also say that I have MUCH happier dogs now, there is a huge difference in those that were clicker traiend from pups to those that weren't. And I have achieved things I never managed with the traditional methods.

Blue added:Why would you teach a dog to Tug on the lead? confused now :-D

It's a REWARD. Most dog LOVE tugging -and those that don't can be taught to love it. It's actually a very powerful reward, and one you always have at hand. If you watch an obedience or agility round on TV from Crufts you will see a lot of handlers using it at the end of the round -a quick game of tug, which to the dog is a major reward. Even my Papillons love a game of tug more than anything else.

Sorry I think I didn't interpretate it right in the first place when you said tug on the lead I thought you mean tug as in pull or tug on the lead with it round the dogs neck ;-)   I was beginning to think you had lost it ;-) :-D

the beauty of using a clicker is that the dog knows exactly when it has got something right and will try to work out what it got right and try to do it again to get the click.  Free shaping is fantastic to watch as you can really see the dog trying to work out what it is you want.  My dogs go mad for clicker training.