What types of tricks and rewards work best for clicker training?
Ideally rewards are something that causes a positive reaction very quickly. We're aiming to link the click with some positive response in the pet and the timing is important.
If the delay is too long then the linking of the click to the positive response will be harder to reinforce.
The timing is also important, click then the reward. As doing them at the same time will confuse the brain and muddy the response.
So as a generally bad choice is food. It just takes too long for the treat to be consumed then following the positive response. It can also tend to associate the response with the act of chewing instead of the click. This isn't really a problem with biodogs as they eat extremely fast.
I am very dog so I like dog praise like good boy, head scritches, and praise. If you find a lot of pleasure in praise then that is an easy and effective reward.
You can also focus on more sexual rewards. In that case during the initial loading of the clicker. Click the clicker and then do something to the pet it likes sexually, like thrust into it or something. Then during training you can take a lighter approach with the reinforcing and grope it or something it likes that you can do immediately and quickly.
But anything the pets finds gives it an immediate spike of joy or pleasure can be used. It really is about what works best for the pet.
This got longer than expected. Ill talk more about tricks in a separate post.