[nagdu] Clicker Treats RE: dog corrections

[Tracy Carcione]

It is my understanding that, once the dog understands the behavior being
clicked for, one is supposed to sometimes click with no treat.  For
instance, Ben loves his cave under my desk at work, and he takes a while
to come out when I call him.  So I call him, and click and treat when he
comes out and touches my hand.  So I thought that the next step is to call
him, and, sometimes, click and treat, and other times just click.  Then I
can gradually phase out the click.  This is what I thought was sometimes
called "The Las Vegas method", because the dog never knows when he might
hit the jackpot, so he will keep playing the game, just in case.

Of course, Ben is very clever, so if I skip the treat more than once in a
row, he stops coming out again.  Have I said that he's a brat?

Have I got the method right, or am I missing something?
Tracy


> That is very interesting that you do not always use the treats with the
> clicker.  AT GDB, they told us that we must use a treat every time that we
> click the clicker, even if it was an accident.  We were strongly
> discouraged
> from doing clicker training around other dogs.  I was reminded why the
> other
> day when I was in a pet shop with a training area.  Someone was doing
> clicker training with their dog, and Lexia was very interested.  Luckily,
> I
> was not working her, as she was there for her bath.  I don't use clicker
> training too much as sometimes Lexia tries too hard for it and misses the
> point as she tries too hard to please in order to get the treat, but it
> certainly works well for teaching new commands.