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Clicker trainers
succeed in
several disciplines.
Clicker training is popular in ring sports such as
obedience, and agility, and in pet dog classes,
usually held indoors. There are also
clicker-trained dogs doing well in working trials in
the UK. Let us know if your dog has reached a
high standard in his or her discipline using
positive-only techniques, as we would like to
feature some of these dogs on the website.
Clicker training is
used for exotic animals. Animals who do
not respond to corrections or which are
inaccessible during training (marine mammals for
example) are often trained using clicker techniques.
Indeed this is where these techniques were first
used outside of the laboratory. Complex chains
of behaviour can be clicker trained and many animal
'stunts' seen in films and advertisements are
trained this way
Clicker trainers are
absent from gundog awards. There are as far as
we are aware, currently no Field Trial
Champions or Field Trial winners in the UK trained
purely by positive-only means. The situation
is the same in the USA at the present time. However,
there are now a number of trainers working towards
changing the status quo, including trainer Denise Hubbard
and her Labrador
Winston. We will continue to
feature their achievements if and when they are
successful.
Let us know if you have been successful in a
Field Trial with a positive-only trained dog.
Why is clicker
training not more popular with gundog trainers? There is great debate as
to why clicker training is not yet more popular in
the gundog world, and a number of theories as
to why this might be so. Some clicker trainers
feel gundog trainers are entrenched in their ways
and reluctant to try new techniques. Others
point out that clicker training has only really come
into its own in the last ten years or so. Many gundog trainers for
their part will point out the complete lack of
clicker trained dogs at upper levels of fieldwork,
despite their achievement in more controlled
environments. They will also point to the very
demanding and unpredictable outdoor environment within which a gundog
must work, as a serious challenge to positive-only
training which relies strongly on being able to
control the consequences of the dog's behaviour.
Pet dogs training. Positive only training
of pet dogs is now very well established with many
local classes using clicker or similar techniques.
The change over the last few years has been
quite dramatic with many members of internet pet dog
forums now advocating positive-only techniques.
Next - Can working gundogs be clicker
trained? |
