#MOUSE CLICKER TRAINING HOW TO#
This list is not a ‘to-do” list for everyone because everyone is going to have different needs, but my hope is that by reading it, you will find an area where you would like to improve and get some ideas for how to go about doing it. Since the panel discussion didn’t go into more detail about how to acquire these skills, I am going to share things that I have found helpful in my own education and development as a clicker trainer. There are so many pieces to explore that it should never become boring and you can always try something else if you get bogged down in one area.
I will do some reading on the science and the let that sit while I spend the next chunk of time on my rope handling skills and then I go back to some other mental aspect such as learning to develop better shaping plans. For some people the mental part is easy, but the physical skills are harder, and for some people, it is the reverse. I find that I tend to alternate between the physical and mental skills so that I don’t overwhelm myself with new information. The physical category would include improving your mechanical skills such as food delivery, timing, control of body language and/or any physical skills necessary to your end goal, and learning to be a good observer. The mental category would include embracing the clicker mindset and philosophy, learning about the science, and learning to be a creative thinker. I think you can group these qualities into two broad categories, mental and physical. Therefore, I think it is helpful to have some other ways to supplement our actual clicker training time.
#MOUSE CLICKER TRAINING PROFESSIONAL#
But many of us are not professional clicker trainers and are only working with a few animals so there is a limit to how much hands on experience we can get. In many cases, these qualities that can be improved through spending time clicker training and the more experienced you get, the more you will find that you are better at many of them. The nice thing about this list is that these are all qualities that we can cultivate in ourselves, even if we start off deficient in some of them. Trusting the process, believing it would work, patienceīeing a “behavior junkie” – great clicker trainers love to watch animals and study behavior
The answers from the panel included the following:
It is useful to see how easy it is to customize the training to any given situation while still following the rules of good clicker training.Ī few years ago, one of the questions that was asked was “what makes a great clicker trainer?” I thought the answers to this question provided a good starting place for identifying some of the ways that we can all improve our clicker training skills. This discussion is an opportunity to compare the way that each trainer approaches training questions and it is enlightening to see that while there is general agreement on some questions, there are differences in technique, strategy or philosophy on others. The panel includes trainers who come from diverse backgrounds, work with different species and train in various environments (including pet training, zoos, and with performance animals). One of the sessions they have every year at Clicker Expo is a panel discussion where many of the presenters sit together and answer questions sent in by the audience. It’s due for an update, but I haven’t gotten to it yet. This article was originally published in 2010. How to Improve Your Clicker Training Skills (even if you can’t get out and train)
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