When it comes to training dogs, timing is everything.

That's because precise timing is essential for shaping your dog's behavior.

Take something straightforward, like teaching your dog to sit. How do you communicate to your dog what it is you want? How do you communicate that you want your dog to sit--not lie down, not walk away, not bark, not roll over, not scratch or paw -- just sit?

Trainers who teach positive techniques explain that the key is to catch your dog doing the behavior you want, and rewarding it.

In Outwitting Dogs, for instance, Terry and I explain that to teach a sit, you can use a food treat to lure your dog into a sitting position. You reward the dog after he or she sits.

But as we explain, there's an intermediate step to the process, and that is marking the sit behavior. Marking the behavior is exactly what it sounds like. You make it clear to your dog that "YES, THIS is the behavior I want. This is the behavior that I'm going to reward."

Like a Frame of Film

If you have trouble understanding what marking a behavior means, try this analogy. Imagine if you filmed your dog wandering around the house. Then, imagine replaying the film very slowly, so you could see it one frame at a time. Now suppose you could flag the exact frame where your dog did something you wanted him or her to do, like a sit. Then imagine could put a mark on that frame -- a sticky note, or that you could circle it with a pen -- to help your dog understand what you are trying to train.

In training, marking a behavior works just like putting a mark on a single frame in a film -- only you mark the frame while the behavior is happening.

Marking behaviors is, therefore, the key to training. The better you are at marking behaviors, the faster your dog will learn.

The main technique for marking behavior that we describe in our book is verbal marker. To use the sit example again, what we teach is that the second your dog's bottom hits the floor, you say "Yes!" and give your dog a treat. That "yes" is the verbal marker. If you use it consistently, your dog will learn that "yes" means a treat is coming. It becomes a tool for marking behaviors.

Verbal markers work just fine. But many trainers, both professional and amateur, have found that using a special tool -- the clicker -- to mark behaviors works even better.

What is a clicker? It's a little device that makes a clicking noise when you press it. Clickers have two key advantages over using a verbal marker. First, the click noise is unique, so your dog will know exactly what it means. And second, the click is also very precise, which means it can mark a behavior down to the split second.

To understand why split-second timing is important, let's go back to our film analogy. Suppose you caught your dog, on film, doing a sit. Would the act of sitting fit on one frame? Probably not. There might be a frame of your dog starting to sit. Several frames of your dog lowering his or her bottom toward the floor. Then a frame that captures the exact instant that dog bottom and floor meet. And then, maybe, some more frames of your dog standing back up again!

So if you can mark only one frame, which do you mark?

The answer depends on your dog, and what you're trying to train. With a sit, we usually mark the very last frame of the sit sequence. For most dogs, marking and rewarding that "frame" leads to a reliable sit. But at other times, trainers mark the beginning of a behavior, or the middle. Suppose, for example, you want to train a dog to do a trick like "spin." You may start by marking the first piece of a spin (for example, when your dog looks to one side). Next, you might progress to marking it when your dog starts to turn, and so on.  

This kind of precise marking is why a clicker can be so useful.

Five Minutes to Our First Sit

My first experiments with clicker training were in my kitchen, with a little Corgi puppy I'd only just brought home. I quickly learned what many other people have also discovered: clicker training is a fast way to train a dog.

I started by "charging" my clicker. I clicked it, and gave me puppy a treat. Within a very short time she knew that if she heard that click, a treat was coming!

And then we started to play. I stood in front of her, treats in one hand, clicker in the other. We watched each other expectantly. After a minute or two, she sat down. Click! I gave her a treat.

After doing this about three times, my dog was volunteering "sits" like crazy!

Five years later, I still rely on my clicker to communicate with my dog when I'm teaching her something new.

To Click or Not to Click

Do you need to clicker train? No. Plenty of people have trained their dogs wonderfully without it. And not everyone wants to bother mastering a gadget, on top of all the rest we need to learn to train our dogs.

But if you are interested in clicker training, it can be a rewarding way to improve your training skills. So to get started, look for a trainer in your community who clicker trains (and uses a positive approach to dog training). There's a chapter introducing clicker training in Outwitting Dogs, and our appendix lists some other helpful books.

Online, check out this Yahoo forum, which is a very supportive community for both new and advanced clicker trainers.

Another online resource to consider, if you're interested in clicker training, is Karen Pryor's website (click on the banner below to check it out).  Karen was a leader in bringing clicker training to the dog world, and her site has books, clickers (of course!) and other useful resources, including information about her seminars.

Clicker training can be a wonderful way to improve your training skills -- and your dog's behavior. So if it interests you, why not give it a try? :-)