|
Dog trainer does his job 1 click at a time
Published August 6, 2009
There was a time when training your dog meant rolling up the very newspaper in your hands right now and giving man’s best friend a hard smack on the nose.
But according to local dog trainer Linore Cleveland, there is a better way to modify canine behavior, without laying a finger on Fido — or getting newsprint on those fingers.
Cleveland is the owner and operator of Kerr Klickers, which uses simple clicking sounds and edible treats to mold canine behavior — a method Cleveland said is more accurate and produces better results than the “jerk-and-treat method.”
“This method is basically about rewarding positive behavior, rather than punishing negative behavior,” Cleveland said.
The process involves a small hand-held device that, when the trainer presses a button, emits a short, crisp clicking sound. When a dog performs the desired behavior, the trainer clicks and then gives the dog a treat. The pairing of a click and a treat cultivates a positive response within the dog, to the point where the click is enough to illicit a positive response.
A main advantage of clicker training is the precision, said Cleveland, who began training dogs with a clicker in 1996 after years of using more conventional methods.
“Conventional training involves tugging and jerking the dog in ways that are sort of what you want, but not really,” she said.
Cleveland likened traditional training to using a jackhammer to hang a picture. But because the click is able to highlight the exact desired behavior, it helps speed training along.
“It shortens the training process, and it works on the most stubborn dogs, the ones their owners never thought could be trained,” she said.
Advocates of clicker training take issue with methods popularized by television personality and dog trainer Cesar Millan, the self-proclaimed Dog Whisperer, whose tactics, Cleveland said, amount to nothing more than jerking and tugging the dog and teaching it to fear the wrong behavior rather than to embrace the right ones.
More information on clicker training can be found on Cleveland’s Web site, www.kerrklickers.com. Cleveland also recommends the book “Reaching the Animal Mind: The Clicker Training Method and What it Teaches Us About Animals,” by Karen Pryor.
Share |
Save |
Mail |
Print |
Comment
|
|
|
 |
|
Photo Reprints
Get Daily Times photos from the latest games and scenic locales.
Special Sections
Visitor's Guide
Real Estate Guide
Hill Country Life
Medical Directory
Home Directory
|
