just looking at dog stuff here on used regina and ended up here and reading your post. don’t know if anyone replied to this yet but here is what I’ve saw about clicker training here in Regina.

We are lucky to have at least two of the top clicker trainers in north america here Sue ailsby and Laurisa oshesky. Both are extremely good at what they do but Sue doesn’t get along with the people in the main stream dog world. one reason may be that she had a brain tumor and her personality change, but her knowledge is still there.

Laurisa is awesome but has issues with lots of things and doesn’t follow through with many things.

Both these ladies taught me lots about working with dogs and clicker training.

If you train your dog through shaping with the clicker and true shaping your dog initially takes a while to catch on after that they learn very quickly what to do, but most people don’t shape train they clicker but don’t shape they reward train. The old school people will treat their dogs but don’t want to use the clicker or understand how to use it right.

I’ve found that I could join the main stream classes with my dogs because the clicker just didn’t fit into their classes. the classes that are offered as clicker class are reward type clicker classes and not shaping. It is hard to for people to understand the shaping part they want to lure trainand they use the reward to lure their dogs around and the results are good and then they level out and the trainers get to a point and can’t move forward past a certain point.

I gave up trying to train my dogs and they are happy here just learning things for me and not going out to prove anything to anyone else. they learn very quickly and actually start shaking when we train. It would be interesting to watch a class that you teach to see how it goes. if you do an agility class and are going to try and clicker train it I would be interested to see how you do.

good luck with the old guard here in the city hope your clicker training can break through.

Owners who do not succeed are probably doing, or not doing, what works for all training: consistency, time and using the materials correctly. Not to mention, not treating the training of your dog like a cookie-cutter, one size fits all approach. There is a lot of choices when using positive reinforcement, of which clicker training is part of, that suits both owner and dog.

Clicker training is the flip-side of the negative-based training. Using positive reinforcement, and not a snapped leash or dominance approach, is far more enjoyable for both the owner and the dog.

I ‘ve done the negative, and much, much,. much prefer the positive – life is too short, especially with our fur friends. Have fun and learn!