If you click, you must treat.
This is dog training law because this is the contract you make with the dog. "If you do something I want, I will do something you want." (Shirley Chong) The click/treat is the manifestation of that contract in it simplest, most concrete, most black and white terms. It is the basis of all communication with your dog.
I'm confused about this, because I thought that the click was supposed to become a conditioned reinforcer and that you always "mark" when the dog did what you wanted, but fade the treats down to occasional and random (as well as giving other rewards like praise and scritches) so that the dog doesn't only perform when they're hungry. I thought unpredictable reinforcers were actually better at getting a behavior than predictable ones, once the dog has actually learned the behavior.
ReplyDelete(The trainers I've worked with used verbal markers rather than clicks. I don't know if that makes a difference in terms of when you need to treat.)
This comment got a little long, so I wrote you a whole post: http://lehrhund.blogspot.com/2012/01/training-with-clicker-vs-clicker.html
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