"Clicker Training with Your Dog: Step-by-Step in Pictures"; By Peggy Tillman: A Review

"Clicker Training with your Dog: Step-by-Step in Pictures" (2000) is a practical and simple "Clicker Training 101" written and illustrated by Peggy Tillman. It is published by Karen Pryor Clickertraining and gets a foreword from the mistress of the clicker, Pryor herself.

Tillman first became an ergonomics engineer before becoming a positive reinforcement dog trainer. This probably explains why complicated concepts are broken down into easy to digest chunks of text. Tillman also does not get bogged down by confusing personal examples, which hurts many other clicker training books. Many other clicker training books red like a long advertisement for the author's dog training services, but this book is an actual guide.

Easy on the Eye

A dog owner that is scrambling to find information about how to change a dog's undesirable behavior doesn't have a lot of time. She needs to get to the information as quickly as possible. This is the book for her. It has large print, narrow margins, is well indexed and has a very clear table of contents.

You don't have to read the book cover to cover in order to get the information you need on a certain training problem, but it does help. The book itself is only 2009 pages long, including index, table of contents, foreword, blank charts for you to take notes and huge illustrations. The book can be easily read in a weekend.

Other Extras

"Clicking with Your Dog" also includes an extensive list of companies offering good equipment, and boredom-busting toys. It also lists websites on dogs, clicker training and dog sports associations. There is also a nice section on incorporating house training with positive reinforcement, which is often just barely mentioned in some other dog training books.

So, Are My Dogs Clicker Trained?

That being said, my dogs are not clicker trained, although they are reasonably trained. I did try clicker training Pony, my oldest, when she was four moths old, but I didn't give the treats fast enough and so she ate the clicker. Fortunately, she spat out the metal spring and concentrated on just the plastic, but even plastic is not recommended for a dog's diet. It could cause internal injuries or digestive blockages.

But my dogs are trained with positive reinforcement, which is the central theme of "Clicking with Your Dog." We just seem to have a bad time with clickers. I think clicker training could help my second dog, Hugo, but since he hangs around with Pony, I'm hesitant to use clickers as Pony may try to eat them.

I use verbal and hand cues with my dogs. I think it is possible to substitute a verbal praise word like "good puppy" or "very nice" instead of using a clicker, but each dog is different. Some will best respond to clickers. They are very easy to find and inexpensive. They also make a consistent noise instead of the variations in tone, pitch and phrasing a verbal command may suffer from. Anyway, even though I don't use a clicker, I do highly recommend "Clicking with Your Dog."