There have been many schools of thought over the years on the best way to train dogs. Some of the old school methods relied on “jerk and praise” or “compulsion” methods that in many circles seem cruel. A new method that has become very popular in recent years is to clicker train your dog.
Clicker training is similar to how dolphins are trained in places like Sea World. Clicker training is a purely positive motivation form of training for your dog. It relies on using an impassive response to indicate to the dog that it has done the correct thing, when the dog does the wrong thing is is simply ignored. Generally a “Clicker” (a device that makes a click sound by pressing on a metal tab) is used. The tone of this device is always constant as apposed to a voice response that can vary greatly depending on your mood. After the click then the dog is give some type of treat to reward it’s action.
This method of training your dog gets your pet to think about what it has to do to get the click and hence the reward.