By Sally Bradbury
A clicker is a small, hand-held device, that makes a distinct clicking sound when pressed.
You can use a verbal marker such as “Yes!” instead, but the sound of a clicker is more unique and consistent than your voice.
A click is always followed by a reward, usually food, as it’s quick and easy.

To be effective, the click must happen immediately the behaviour occurs, just like taking a snapshot of it.
How to teach yourself to use a clicker effectively, and gain the mechanical skills/timing necessary:
- Before you start training your dog, sit and watch the news on TV
- Click every time the presenter blinks, or says a certain word, or the camera changes views
- Once you have mastered your timing, then you are ready to teach your dog and have some fun
You use a clicker to teach the behaviour, then add the cue after the dog has a clear understanding of what you are rewarding/reinforcing. After that, the clicker isn’t needed anymore for that particular behaviour, unless you need to revisit the training.
First, ‘charge’ the clicker by simply clicking and treating a few times, so your dog knows a treat follows a click.
Some behaviours don’t need a cue. These are default behaviours. Checking in, or making eye contact with you, for example. You can click and treat your dog for doing this. Once he has discovered that’s how to get treats, you can just reward/reinforce and praise, rather than continuing with the clicker.
To get the behaviour you want to teach, you can lure, capture, or shape.
Luring is getting the dog to follow a treat in your hand into a sit, down, stand, turn, or whatever. The lure must be faded out/stopped after a few repetitions, or your dog will only carry out the behaviour if you have a treat in your hand.
Capturing is watching and waiting for the behaviour to happen. You can have a lot of fun with this one. It’s the only way to teach a yawn, a blink, a ear flick, or a tail wag on cue. Click and treat the behaviour as it happens, then put it on cue.
Shaping is where you would click and treat any approximation towards the end goal. For example, teaching a lie down. You can start by clicking and treating head lowered. After a few of these your dog will lower his head but you won’t click it. Your dog will want to emphasise this in case you weren’t watching, so you might get shoulders dropping as well. Click and treat that instead. This will soon become a lie down.
Clicker training resources:
Kikopup’s YouTube Channel
Karen Pryor’s Clicker Training