Episode 48 - Clicker and Treats, Together Forever. But You Can Leave Home Without them

5/28/2026

"I have a question that has come up from some of my puppy parents, and I am not sure how to answer. How do I phase treats out and use the clicker exclusively? I was thinking clicker every time, but treats sometimes until there are no treats, and at what age would you fully remove treats? Do treats ever get fully removed? Many of my parents reported that many of the pups are really food motivated, and I'm not sure that is my goal ... I would like them to be clicker motivated at some point."

This podcast uncouples:

How shaping behaviors with a clicker works
How a clicker becomes a shaping tool
How and when you can lose the clicker and treats.

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To read the transcript for this episode, click the link below.

Transcript - Episode 48

I'm Jane Messineo Lindquist., and this is a Puppy Culture Potluck podcast. You bring the topics, we bring the conversation.

Here's the question for this episode.

I have a question that's come up for some of my puppy parents, and I'm not sure how to answer. How do I phase treats out and use the clicker exclusively? I was thinking clicker every time, but treats sometimes until there are no treats. And at what age would you fully remove treats?

Do treats ever fully get removed? Many of my parents reported that many of the pups are really food motivated, and I'm not sure that's my goal. I would like them to be clicker motivated at some point.

Okay. Me again. First of all, this is an awesome question and the reason why it's such a great question is it illustrates what I'm always saying about learning theory, that learning theory is the thing that you skip because it sounds sciencey and boring and dry and dull and you know, it is true to an extent.

It's not fun and sexy like little puppies on baby agility equipment at a party. And I definitely soft pedaled on learning theory in puppy culture because, like I'm always saying, breeders are not trainers. If they wanted to be trainers, they would. I really tried to make it as grab and go as possible for a breeder, but you come to a certain point in your training career either as a dog breeder or a dog trainer, and without understanding some of the underpinnings of why you're doing what you're doing.

That is to say, learning theory, it can be very difficult to know what to do, particularly for breeders to at least understand the difference between operant conditioning and classical conditioning and the laws of learning that apply to each of those, at least generally. We do cover this in puppy culture, okay? If you've seen puppy culture, you see, you know the difference between classical and operant conditioning.

But honestly, I think sometimes because the puppies are so cute in, in that film that, breeders, particularly if they only watch it once, don't always fully comprehend all the lessons involved. So what I'm going to do is answer her question by going through the logic chain, working backwards of what we use the clicker to do, how we use it as a tool, how shaping works, and how we create a clicker as a tool.

And I'm going to kind of fold in a little bit of an explanation of classical versus operant conditioning. That having been said. Disclaimer, this is not a course level podcast. I get into teaching this in my courses, books and films, different ones for breeders and puppy owners. I'll talk about that at the end of the podcast if you're interested. But for now, let's break this down.

First, let me talk about when you use a clicker, because there seems to be some confusion about what the clicker is actually for. The clicker. It's a tool we use in training sessions to shape a specific behavior. Once the behavior is finished being shaped and we put that behavior on a verbal, visual, or contextual cue, we no longer use the clicker.

We might break out the clicker to polish things up or tweak a behavior when something regresses, but by and large, it's not like we carry a clicker around everywhere we go. Unless we are specifically training a behavior in a context where we need the clicker. So the clicker is a sculpting tool, not a remote control. Second, let's talk about the way shaping works.

Step one you pick a behavior you want to shape. Step two you slice the behavior up into successive approximations. Step three you reinforce the first approximation until the dog is very obviously offering it in expectation of a click. And then number four you stop clicking that approximation. Step five. This produces an extinction burst. And the dog will offer a flurry of behaviors that are adjacent to the behavior that you just reinforced.

And six the dog will offer the next approximation toward the goal behavior and you start clicking that. Then finally, step seven, you continue ratcheting up through the approximations of the behavior this way until you have your goal behavior, and then you put it on cue. At that point, the clicker has done its work and there's no longer any need to use it for that behavior. The behavior is finished.

So we covered when you use a clicker how you use a clicker. Now let's talk about what a clicker is. A clicker is what we call a conditioned reinforcer meaning to say you pair the clicker with food. And if you do that enough times, the puppy or dog will have a physical response to the sound of the clicker that is the same as his response to food.

His parasympathetic nervous system kicks in. He'll start salivating. His digestive system will engage and get ready to receive treats. And this is the most key thing for you to wrap your head around. This is an involuntary end or reflexive response. The puppy does not think to himself, oh, I like the sound of that clicker. I think I'll drool.

It just happens whether the puppy wants to or not. The puppy could not stop if he wanted to. It's what we call a classically conditioned response. This is Pavlov's dog. If you recall, Pavlov rang the bell, gave the dog food, rang the bell, gave the dog food. Eventually, when Pavlov rang the bell, the dog salivated as if food were present, even if food were never presented.

Let me just say that the way that you make a classically conditioned reinforcer is pairing. You just present the conditioned stimulus, which is the clicker, and then you give food, clicker, food. One two clicker food clicker food doesn't matter what the puppy or dog is doing, because you are just creating an emotional nexus there, so you're not rewarding a particular behavior or shaping a behavior.

It's just one two. It, it's classically conditioned until you have that involuntary response. Operant conditioning, or what we think of as training is different in that it's an if then proposition. So the dog sits. You click and treat or treat. It's if the dog sits then the dog gets something. And eventually intellectually the dog figures out, oh, if I do this, this results in treats.

It's not an involuntary response, very much the opposite. It's voluntary. And that is what you need for an operant response. Why is this so important. Well in operant conditioning you can and should in fact thin reinforcements. It's called schedules of reinforcements. So if you're teaching a dog, for instance, to walk on leash with you first you click every time.

Well, first you'd shape the dog up into position, which is not you know, it doesn't happen all at once. That's what our Magic Circle training is about, is you gradually close it in and close it in where you're going to reinforce that dog until the dog's right next to your leg and walking, in heel position. Then you start varying how often you give a reinforcer.

So you're going to click first for every step. Then maybe every two steps, then maybe every three steps. And then you're going to start varying it one step five step two step seven steps. And you're going to gradually move that average forward until you faded the food almost entirely. Again, beyond the scope of this podcast, but thinning reinforcement schedules is something that I've covered in my books and other courses.

But it's not super important for you to know about as a breeder and only a little bit important for you to know as a young puppy owner. This is why I didn't get much into schedules of reinforcement in Puppy Culture or in the puppy course. We concentrated more on shaping. Okay, more on getting the behavior than thinning reinforcements.

You know the problem with giving people information on thinning the ratio and schedule schedules of reinforcement is that people are in a hurry to get rid of the food they think they win if they get rid of the food more quickly. So I deliberately did not include that tool in the educational experiences that are intended for people with young puppies because in my opinion, it's counterproductive.

People try and thin the schedule too quickly. They're too obsessed with it. They want the puppy off of food. They think they win if the puppy is off food, and that is detrimental to the entire process of training the puppy of bonding with the puppy. I do teach it, but for older puppies and dogs, suffice it to say, yes, there is a way with finished behavior is that you get to a point where you're not feeding it every time, or you're not using food, you're using other kinds of reinforcers, or you're not really having to reinforce it at all.

It just becomes something that the puppy or dog does. But the clicker is different because the clicker is a classically conditioned reinforcer, and you have to maintain the nexus between the conditioned and the unconditioned reinforcer. You have to give food every time you click that clicker forever for the rest of that dog's life. Because if you don't, you will lose your classically conditioned response.

It's not like operant conditioning or training. There are two different things, and it's really key for you as a breeder or a puppy owner to keep those buckets separate.

I'm just going to interject here that there's a saying in dog training, which is that Pavlov's always sitting on your shoulder, meaning to say whenever you're using the clicker and training something, there is an element of classical conditioning that's going on.

This is why we always say it's more important how you train something than what you train, especially with puppies, because something trained with positive methods creates feelings of bonding and love toward you. Whereas when you start using aversives puppies, you start classically conditioning feelings of fear and avoidance. That having been said functionally, the way that classical conditioning works in your clicker and thinning the ratio for teaching your dog how to walk on leash are two separate buckets, and you have to keep it straight. How you work each of those buckets.

So in case you haven't arrived at this conclusion already, my direct answer to this breeder is that you can never remove the connection between the food and the clicker, nor should you want to. Now, both the puppy course and Puppy Culture are more about basic shaping of behaviors because that's where you are with very young puppies. I do not recommend that the average breeder try to thin ratios with very young puppies.

They do fine with a continuous schedule, meaning to say a treat for every repetition of a behavior. But you know the question that this breeder asked, even if it's a little bit jumbled up? I understand what she's asking, and she's right on point. She's wondering, did these people have to carry around a food and clicker the rest of their lives?

Are they married to all this equipment? And the answer is no. Number one, because you only use the clicker to train the behaviors. And once they're trained, you don't need the clicker anymore. Number two, there is thinning the ratio. And that is the next step okay. That covers the breeders question. Now I'm going to talk about the resources I have available to help you with these topics.

So we have a bundle for puppy owners called essentials. And that covers from the first time you power up the clicker through two, thinning the ratio through to taking those behaviors. Because she didn't mention this, but this is the thing, taking those behaviors where you've already thinned the ratio you got to finish behavior, it's on cue, and now you got to take it out in public.

That's a whole other leveling up of how do you get this dog to do this. You can see that bundle and what it includes on puppyculture.com. It's the essentials for puppy owners.

Breeders always, always, we want you to start with Puppy Culture because that's the root of everything. But if you want the next steps, you need a copy of When Pigs Fly My Dog Training Book.

It goes through everything from the very basics of learning theory, how to use a clicker, how to shape a behavior, how to thin a ratio, how to take it on the road. This is the book you need. It's inexpensive, easy to read, and you're going to have a lot of fun with it. You can find everything at puppyculture.com.

Well, that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye.