"Click to Calm" - a great book for training your dog

[maiko]

I just wanted to share a book I came across that made a real difference in training our dog.
It is called “Click to Calm” by Emma Parson.

After a real roller coaster of learning experiences for everyone involved (the dog, my husband and me) I kind of hit a wall motivation-wise. The dog, a hunting terrier, male, 9 months old is quite the opposite of being aggressive as he loves people and playing but from the start he was way too excited and hard to calm down.

After some time I was just tired of getting sarcastic comments like: “Well, great decision to get a terrier as a first dog.” The dog is a fit, but we as owners clearly were lacking the tools and knowledge and attitude it takes to train a self-confident dog.

The clicker training really helped. He entered puberty full swing and was suddenly half-deaf when it came to following commands and acted just stupid. Then we started the clicker training and two weeks later we had him temporarily fixed with a hormone chip. That has been nearly two weeks now and man, this dog is making progress. He can suddenly concentrate and train with the other dogs instead of being all excited and jumping around, pulling on the leash. And he manages to calm down while in company. He still has a big kennel in the living room for the night or for short periods when we can’t supervise him and he doesn’t want to rest, but suddenly we experience more and more times when the dog is sleeping on the carpet or chewing a bone and being super relaxed. It might be a combination of the clicker and the hormones but the clicker had shown great results from the start.

We (dog and humans) all still have a lot to learn but the improvements have been really amazing and maybe the book is worth a read for other dog-owners.

 

[Seppo Ilmarinen]

Thanks for sharing the book; i just bought it and will read it through, since i'm interested about clicker training and been applying it every now and then. We have 1.5 year old German Spitz, who gets easily excited, especially on a leash when she sees other dogs. Using clicker seems to help.

 

[loreta]

Hmmm, interesting. I will read about it. Arthuro, my adorable terrier, is very nervous, likes to jump and fly, communicate with everybody, etc. He is still young but. Thanks for sharing this information.

 

[maiko]

It is the same for our dog, when meeting another dog he was acting totally crazy to get there and sniff and play. The clicker training helped to get him out of the total craze (althoug there is always room for improvement ).
If you have the opportunity maybe a playgoup would be a great addition the training. After the first clicker sessions I started taking him to a dog play ground once a week. It's crazy we are living on the countryside in a forest but it is forbidden to let your dog run off-leash plus many people are afraid their dog might use the opportunity to take off. As a consquence the dogs from our village have no free social interaction. I want the dog to learn that there is a diffference between being on the leash (no playing, more focus) and running free (play time) plus I wanted to avoid his excitement turning into frustration or aggression. The playground helps and it is really amazing to see how clearly dogs are in their communication and how much fin they have. There are laways around fifteen dogs of all sizes and ages and the older ones teach the younger ones when they are getting to wild.