You wanna make sure you keep the clicker away from their ears because it's pretty loud to them. And you'll notice after a while your puppy starts staring at the clicker. They start to get the connection and you'll know when your puppy knows what the click means that a treat's coming. You'll know that because you'll click when your puppies not looking at you and if your puppy orients for a treat, then they know what it is. Sometimes you have to hide the treat behind you, she's gonna dive right in here. And another thing you can do with your puppy, there's lots of preventative things you can do when they're this little, handle them and as soon as they know what the click means when they're nice and calm, you click and then they get a treat.

And you can touch their paws, get them used to having their paws touched but a click equals a treat. You've always gotta pay up. And now I'm gonna hold her ear and I gotta be careful not to get the clicker near it. But what she's learning is, "Oh gee, being pushed around is a good thing, because I keep getting treats for it." So that's one of the preventative things you can do with puppies. Another thing is when they're eating; you want to be around their food bowl because you always want them to accept humans near their food bowl.

"That's a good girl, yeah. Good girl, you're so cute, yeah, you're a good girl, yeah." Let's see if she knows what the click means. Let's see if she turns around when she hears it. Oh, she did. She turned around. She's starting to get the idea. "Come here little girl." Here we go. "Yeah, where's my treat?" she says. "Here it is."

We call it charging up the clicker. You teach them that this sound that means nothing to them at first takes on a meaning of "Oh I hear that and good things are gonna happen. I'm gonna get a treat." Now some trainers don't do that at first, they just start training with it and the puppies catch on. I like to have people do this because it teaches them how to do it. It teaches that you click and then you treat separately so it's not all one motion. They learn to keep the clicker away from the dog's ear. They learn to not put a lot of motion into the clicker to scare the dog. A lot of people tend to go like that, so it's just click and then treat. Its two separate things.

I test the dog. Most dogs will do maybe 10, 15 click and treats and then I'll just let them go about their business and I'll click when they aren't looking at me and if they turn around with expectant body language, like "Where's my treat?", I know they've got the connection, and then I can start training anything with it. And when you start training with it, what you do is click the behavior that you want. So you have to know what you want. Treat up above head, butt goes down, click and then she gets it. By bringing my hand up, she sits, I click, I don't have a treat in my hand but she still gets one and I like to get the dog back into the position to give them the treat. And then we do it all over again. And this becomes the hand signal and eventually I change it to this. "Puppy!"

What you'll do is you'll do several repetitions and the dog will be catching on. It's praise and lick time. And then you'll go back and do it the next day and they haven't a clue, but they learn faster the next time.