Target

[camilleswescott]

I have two questions. We’ve been working on targeting, and for some reason I’ve been saying touch. Should I stick with that word? Maybe use target when we try with paws?

 

Second question- he tends to lick my hand instead of touching with his nose? Should I ignore that? Sometimes it works if I use a sticky note instead, but sometimes he licks that, too. Once in a while he gets so focused on the treats I can’t get him to do it. Any suggestions? Some days he has it rock solid and other says he acts like it’s completely new!

[JMFS]

I can share insight as to the phrase you use and that's, use whatever works for you. The benefit to using a more common phrase is that other people will already know how to "talk" to your dog, but ultimately you're the one who needs to communicate so if touch works better than target, go with touch.

 

For example, I have a friend who asked Momo for "paw." Momo looked at me as though to ask, "who is this guy?" When I told my friend Mo knows shake and high five, everyone was on the same page. My behavioral trainer kept using the word "free" for Momo, but I trained him with "break" so she had to catch herself numerous times. :D Momo also knows "okay" and the hand motion you would use as though to invite someone to go ahead of you. I say that to illustrate how smart these pooches are. She even went so far as to say, Oklahoma, Okra, Oh yay, and several other words starting with an O and he held fast until she said, "Okay." I personally use "touch" myself. I tend to stick with monosyllabic words because someone long ago told me they do better with single syllables and they're easier to say quickly, which can be fun for a game of Sit Down Up where I rapid fire the words and they follow through (some days better than others!).

[Adrienne Farricelli]

Yup, Jennifer is spot on! You can use any word you like for the cue as long as it is short and doesn't sound like any other word that you are likely to use very commonly in conversations or for other commands (cues).

 

About the licking, yes, you want the nose touch so ignore those licks and reward only nose touches. If you stick to that, you should gradually see an increase in the percentage of nose touches compared to licking (as long as you don't have something tasty smeared on the item used to target!)

 

About the treats, where are you keeping them when you are doing the training? They should not be in plain view unless we are still in the luring stage which should be very brief.

 

It is no uncommon for dogs to go through phases during which they may seem as what we are asking them to do is completely new. This often happens in the delicate acquisition stage of learning if we have taught them too many things at once or when they need a little break. Often, in such cases, if we give them a little break, we will find that right around the corner is a phase where they will show they have learned the task very well.

 

This brings back memories of training school when we had to teach our dogs a whole lot and in a short time and we had to get ready for the final test. Our dogs were confusing some cues for another and some of them just threw the towel and were refusing to do anything! Our mentor told us to give our dogs a little break, so we skipped a couple days of training and just let our dogs be, playing, sniffing etc. Well, this advice was spot on, as next thing we knew, when we resumed training, our dogs were back on track and performed even better than before!

Edited August 22, 2019 by Adrienne Farricelli