Click to Calm or Quiet

Click to calm

Prerequisite

Your dog should be accustomed to the clicker
it helps if your dog knows a few behaviors

Tools

Clicker
Treats
Patience

Training Environment

As far as possible from the trigger. As always, the farther you are from any distractions or triggers the better. You want to keep your dog under the threshold where he or she gets upset if at all possible. Once the adrenal system kicks in your dog is going to have a hard time.
This exercise can be used when you are in any situation when your dog might misbehave, and if possible you want to work in a similar context or where the behavior happens.

Recommended Treat Position

If the dog is staring at something I always treat on the side of the face closest to me. I want to make the dog turn his head in my direction to take the treat. This will help shape the dog into turning towards me when the trigger appears.
Treating the dog on a mat can help turn the mat into a “magnet”.
Tossing the treat away from the trigger can help the dog redirect.

Steps

The trick is to click and treat those brief moments when your dog is not “being a jerk”.

If the dog is barking, wait for pauses between barks and click and treat those momentary pauses between barks. Gradually you can increase the duration of these pauses until your dog all but quits barking.
If the dog is fiddling about in an inappropriate way, click any time your dog isn’t doing the behavior. After a few sessions, start asking for a behavior to replace the “naughty” behavior, and click and treat that. For example, when dogs come to group classes if I have one that is struggling to stay calm, I have the handler click anything that isn’t “nuts”. Gradually the dog gets calmer and calmer, and the handler clicks every calm behavior.
If your dog is nipping or pulling on you for attention, click the absence of nipping and pulling.

Homework

Do your best to set up training sessions several times a week in controlled environments. The more you set it up so your dog has a high probability of success, the faster you will correct the behavior.

Keep sessions short. Less than 10 minutes. This is hard on your dog!

At the End of This Step

You should see the unwanted behavior gradually disappear.