Erika and Penelope- Clicker Training

We are about a week into clicker training and both Penelope and I are learning lots! Penelope is not completely clicker training, but she is getting much better. We have been at this for many many hours and it is beginning to pay off.

Penelope finally started to participate. She takes a minute to get use to the environment she is in when training and then she is good to go. She has been doing a lot better now since her feeding time and amount of food are more consistent. CONSISTENCY is key when clicker training!!

I am posting a video that will show Penelope’s progress and how I am attempting to clicker train her. In the video you will notice that Penelope is still a little scared of the clicker.  My method is to put the food in the bottom right hand corner everytime. Once she gets to the food I click right before she picks it up. You will see that when she hears the clicker she runs to the other side of the box to eat and then returns to the corner. This is a good start. I have trained her where the food is going to be, but now I need to associate more with the clicker to the food.

There are a few problems here with my method that you will see in the video. First, I have not been able to get a lot of trials in with Penelope because she gets too full. You can see in the video that it takes her awhile to eat the food, so I have fixed this problem now with making the food smaller. Also, when Penelope runs to the other side of the box to eat the food, she is easily distracted when she is finished.  Penelope pays a lot of attention to my hand. I try to put the food in when she is eating the previous piece that she picked up. I also stick my hand in the box every so often so she sees that everytime she sees my had does not mean food.

We are still working hard. This video shows a great first step to clicker training. I think I am actually going to start a new method with her that will hopefully eliminate some of the problems I am having. Cross your fingers!!