 |
||
Clicker Training Books |
||
|
Clicker training for dogs can be done in many different ways and for many different purposes. If you are learning clicker training on your own, I think DVDs or videos may be better for giving you the all-important sense of timing but books are easier to pick up and refer to. I use both. On this page, I review two dog clicker training books:
Also, my page about positive dog training has a review of Pat Miller's book, The Power of Positive Dog Training, which includes a lot of information about clicker training for dogs. For all the pages on this site about clicker training dogs, click the link.
Click for Joy: Questions and Answers from Clicker Trainers and their Dogs, by Melissa C. Alexander
Melissa Alexander of the popular ClickerSolutions website and forum, has compiled a very convenient reference guide, complete with an index. It's a large, attractively laid out paperback with over 100 questions answered. Each question has two or more pages, with the question, its answer, often a short success story, and a little "See also" sidebar, listing related questions, much like hyperlinks. Each chapter covers about six or eight questions. The chapters are: About Clicker Training, Equipment, That Magical Click, Reinforcement, Getting Started, Punishment, Mistakes, and Errors, About Training Sessions, Getting the Behavior, Making the Behavior Perfect, Reliability and Fluency, Specific Behaviors, Solving Problem Behavior, Beyond Training, Beyond Method: The Underlying Science This book was at my bedside for weeks after I bought it. I enjoyed reading a bit before I fell asleep... and the plot didn't keep me turning the pages for hours! If you were to buy one book on clicker training for dogs, this would be an excellent choice. It's available from Dogwise and from Amazon.com.
Clicking with Your Dog: Step by Step in Pictures, by Peggy Tillman
If you have children, they may ask you why the people in the illustrations don't have clothes on, or hair on their heads, but are just outlines.
The pictures clearly illustrate the training steps, and the book would be a good one to use with your kids. Peggy Tillman commented on that too: "The book was based on my classroom handouts and I made sure it was simple so the adults would read it and the kids could read it. It is written at the 5th grade level for this reason." Corresponding with Peggy led me to pull the book out again and try some of the exercises. I'm intrigued by the "Put it away" exercise, where the dog learns to put toys in a toybox, laundry in a basket, and more. Clicking with Your Dog is at Dogwise, and if you are so inclined, once you get there, you can browse other books on clicker training for dogs. I didn't see it at Amazon -- it's often the case that Dogwise will have things that Amazon doesn't. Here's a handy link to Clicker Training Books and DVDs at Dogwise. |
||
