I have a question for those of you who clicker train, or know anything about it:

I started clicker training Ollie several months ago and things are going great. She already does several things on command. I have been clicking, then rewarding, after every "trick" she does. Her reward is an almond in the shell, so it takes her awhile to eat her treat. I want to have her do a few things in a row before I give her a treat to make things more efficient, and so she's not getting 20 nuts a day! My question: Do I still click after every time she completes the command, or do I click after the trick series, right before I reward?

Say I have her wave, then come, then be a bat (flip upside down), then wave again. Do I click after each one, even if I just give her one nut at the end??

I don't know as much as most others on the board but...

Click after she does everything you want her to do, like it's one trick. If you click after each part of one trick, she will expect a reward after each of the clicks and will not want to finish her trick because she knows click=treat. So she must wave, then come, then be a bat, then wave again...and THEN click and treat, c/t.

That's what I was thinking, but I wanted to get some other input as well! BTW Shane, what does c/t mean??

c/t=click/treat

do the click/give a treat , sorry

okay, gotcha!!

Camille, when I was at Barbara Heidenreich's workshop, when she started training a behavior, she treated for every positive step or movement toward the end behavior. She would have a handful of treats. An almond would be broken into several tiny pieces. If it was a small step toward the behavior, the bird got one treat. If it was large step or completion of the behavior she 'jack-potted' the bird and it got to eat several pieces of the treat out of the handful of treats in the palm of her hand.

As long as you've 'loaded the clicker', basically taught Ollie that, click=treat, she'll know that as you click for a behavior or a step along the way it means a treat is coming.

When you first start training a behavior, you should click and treat for every successful step along the way. As they get closer to the actual end result behavior you want, you can begin to wait for her to offer more behaviors toward the final goal before treating, but still give the click so she knows she's on the right path.

Now that she already knows the behaviors, I would think you'd be able to string together a few successive behaviors, clicking as she does them, and she will still know a treat is coming. I would probably start small and build up, having her do 2-3 behaviors, clicking after each successful one but waiting for the 'jackpot'. If you see any reluctance, you can always backtrack and give her a small treat until she understands what you're going to do.

If I were you, I would click and give her a tiny piece of almond for a behavior well done and would wait until the end of the training session, to 'jackpot' her with an entire almond.

Separately, she knows each of the tricks I mentioned down to a "t". Once she sees the clicker and before I even command anything she will immediately either wave real big, or fly to me and almost lose her grip on my hand as she's flipping over into the "bat" as quickly as she can.

When I was teaching her those individually, I clicked and rewarded after every bit of "good progress," and after she learned each of them I continued to click and treat after each completion for quite awhile.

I started trying this yesterday, and she does the series of those 3 tricks so quickly that it appears to work just clicking at the end of all 3 and then treating.

I've heard so many times that "the clicker is the bridge to the reward." I guess whatever way you used it would work as long as you stuck to it. So far Ollie has been getting a treat everytime she hears the click. I'm thinking that it would maybe confuse her if I started clicking after each trick, but waiting until the end to treat her. *She won't eat small pieces of almond, or even a whole almond if its already been shelled. She is VERY picky, and has to have an almond in the shell before she'll eat it. That's why treating her for every little trick is very impractical!*

I remember watching that video of Einstien on PetStar, and she would go through about a 3 minute long show without any sort of reward until the end. I'm sure that's how you can go about it when they've been doing things like that for years!

Lu will do the same thing. He sees the clicker and goes thru every trick he knows, hoping he'll get a piece of pine nut.

Eventually you wean out the "click" and just give the treat. I have Melinda's book (think that's her name) and 8 out of 10 times, if the trick is successful, you stop the click....but keep reinforcing with the treat.

Same goes for the treat......after a while, they don't get it every time.

When teaching the rings on a peg, yes, you click/treat for every forward move....walking to the ring C/T, touching the ring C/T, the day they pick up the ring.....c/t with a jackpot. When you want them to go one step further, and they have mastered picking up the ring...then, you DON'T click...now they know a treat is coming...but whatever they just did wasnt' the end result....that's when you add in the new "step", and add the c/t with every little step.

IMHO, just clicking with no treat confuses them.

Lu will do the entire set of rings without any click now. He knows the treat is coming at the end.

Click when she's completed the full set of behaviors that you want. The theory I'm accustomed to says the click signals the moment that a treat has been earned, and promises that the treat will be delivered within the next couple of seconds. If you click without immediately delivering a treat, you've basically breached your contract with the bird and the click will become meaningless if you do that very often.

Right..while they're still learning. Once the trick is mastered, an occasional treat is recommended, to reinforce the behavior.

As we all know, they're not stupid.....whenever Lu wants a pine nut, he'll just start waving like mad and clicking his beak. I'm not going to let him train me anymore than he already has!