23. Target

23. TARGET

LEVEL ONE

TARGET - the dog must deliberately Touch the handler’s hand with her nose on only one voice cue. The hand in position is, naturally, a second, allowable cue.

DISCUSSION We taught the dog to stay away from your hand (Zen). Now we’re going to teach her the opposite – to touch your hand. There are an infinite number of things you can get a dog to do if he’ll follow your hand, including heeling, getting onto the scale at the vet’s, spinning, and jumping. It’s also the first step in retrieving.

When I meet a new dog that's jumping all over me, wrestling me for treats, giggling and bumping and trying to knock me down, I teach her Zen first. Then he’s a little more balanced and we can start having a conversation. On the other hand, when I meet a new dog that is afraid of me, or that doesn’t feel confident enough to offer me much, the first thing I teach is Touch. It’s usually a very easy behavior for a beginner dog to learn, quick for the trainer to explain, and gives everyone a little more confidence. Also, if I have a dog that’s afraid of men, for example, I can make men look a lot less scary by magically changing them from monsters into objects to be Touched. Once the dog can manipulate something to get a treat, it’s hard to be afraid of it any more.

EASY BEGINNINGS The first cue for hand Zen is a closed fist signaling “Stay away from this hand!” Since you now want the dog to approach and touch your hand, be very careful that you aren’t showing her your fist. Put your fingertips and thumb together as if you’re holding a treat. Hold this imaginary treat out so the dog can sniff it. When he reaches forward to sniff, be ready, and click when her nose touches your fingertips. Give her the treat from your other hand, or drop it on the floor. Repeat. That’s all there is to it!

PROBLEM SOLVING

HE ISN’T INTERESTED IN MY HAND! Of course, if you've been working the Zen lesson, or if for any other reason he doesn’t seem inclined to sniff your fingers, you’ll have to help her out a little until he gets the idea. Most dogs will sniff your fingertips if you pretend to eat your invisible treat and then offer it to them (Mmmm, wow, this is good! Want some?). If she won’t fall for that, try a couple of rounds (10 treats per round) of Rapid Fire Reinforcement – shovel the treats in her mouth one treat at a time as fast as you can - and then try holding your invisible treat out again. If she still won’t fall for it, maybe you’ll have to actually hold a treat in your fingertips to lure her to touch, click when she touches, and hand the lure treat to her. I’ve never had to smear my hands with peanut butter, but that’s another possibility. Do NOT reach out and touch her nose. Let her touch you. Her nose is sensitive. If you’re going to bop her, she’s not going to bop you.

SHE WAS DOING GREAT BUT THEN SHE LOST INTEREST. Look at your three problem-solving questions. What’s your Criteria? Simple – she touches your hand with her nose. You can’t ask her to cross rivers – or even to cross the room. Hold your hand right in front of her nose so learning is easy for her and you can get as many repetitions in as short a time as possible. If you’re waiting for her to whistle a tune or tapdance before you click, stop it. Click her for touching your hand with her nose.

How’s your Rate of Reinforcement? If you weren’t getting the behavior often enough, you weren’t clicking often enough. If nothing’s happening, she’s going to wander off. Lure her if you have to. Get rid of distractions. Stop training altogether until just before her next meal when she’s hungry and maybe more interested in how to get your treats.

Finally, how’s your Timing? If your click is half a second late, you’ve been clicking the dog for NOT touching your hand, because she DID touch you, then pulled away, and THEN got clicked. Learn from this. If the click isn’t marking the exact behavior you want, what IS it marking? Better find out, because that’s what you’re going to end up with!

SHE’S NOT TOUCHING, SHE’S BITING! If she’s over-enthusiastic about getting the treat from you, present your palm instead of your fingertips. That way she doesn’t have anything to grab. Drop the treat on the floor instead of handing it to her. If she seems to think she’s supposed to put her mouth ON your hand instead of just touching it, wow, congratulations! She’s halfway to retrieving! That doesn’t solve the problem of getting her to touch your hand though. Again, present her with your palm so it’s tougher for her to get it in her mouth. Click before she actually gets to your hand, until she stops putting so much effort into the grab. Forget about your hand and get her to touch something bigger, like a book or a plate, that she can’t put in her mouth. Or just forget about the whole thing and jump directly to teaching the Retrieve. You can always go back and teach the Touch later!

ADDING A CUE Common cues for Touch are “Touch”, “Bump”, or “Bop It”. Later you’ll be teaching her to touch things with her paw. When you’re looking for a nose-touch cue, remember that you’ll need a different paw-touch cue, so save something like “Punch” for later. When she’s reliably bopping your hand with her nose, tell her your cue word just as she’s making contact.

CONTINUING EDUCATION When you have 10 Times Right on your nose-bopping, start moving your hand around. Put it below her nose so she has to stoop a little to reach it. Put it above her nose so she has to reach a bit. Put it left and right. Think about limbering up her neck while you’re figuring out where to put your hand next. Put your hand in front of her nose when she’s standing up. When she can handle that, put it WAY out in front of her so she has to take a step or two to reach it. Higher, farther, faster…

LEVEL TWO

Dog touches the marked END of a touch stick with her nose with only one voice cue. Naturally, presentation of the stick is a second cue.

DISCUSSION: Since the dog is already targeting your hand, the challenges here are a) switching the targeting behaviour to the stick, and b) getting her to aim for the tip of it only. Once you've got her touching the end, you can use the stick as a lure to produce behaviours that you can't quite reach with your hand – weaving through your legs, spinning in circles, over jumps and up ramps. I use it to get a good show stack on the llamas – their necks are so long I have trouble luring their weight forward with just my hand.

EASY BEGINNINGS: Try it the easy way first. Present the end of the stick to the dog. She might just reach out and touch it! If not, try pretending to nibble the end of it (appreciative noises dont hurt: "Mmmm, that's good, wanna try it?"), then offer it to her. Be ready to click when she touches it.

If that doesn't work, get her to target your hand X5, then hold the stick in your target hand and gradually let it peek out of your hand until she's touching the stick before she gets to your hand. Click the stick touch and pull your hand away so she can't touch it too. This is the method I usually use with the llamas.
Now she's touching the stick, we need to get her to focus on the end of it only. Start by pointing the stick right at her so she CAN'T touch it anywhere but the end. X10. Then gradually begin tilting it so she has access to the rest of it. Make sure that she keeps giving you enthusiastic touches. Sooner or later, she's going touch the stick up the shaft a bit. Don't click. Let her figure it out. If you rewarded her enough for touching the stick, if you rewarded her enough for touching the end of it, if you changed the position of the stick slowly enough, when she doesn't get a click for touching the shaft, her next touch will be on the end again. Play around with this explanation until you can present any part of the stick to her and she'll go to the end to touch it.

PROBLEM SOLVING:

SHE WON'T TOUCH THE STICK! If worse comes to worse, you can always smear a little peanut butter, soft cheese, or liverwurst on the stick. Just enough to get her to touch it, then you can continue by clicking.

SHE QUITS IF I WAIT FOR HER TO GO TO THE END! Don't go on to the next step before you have the dog eagerly offering you behaviour where you are. If she's eagerly offering touches to the stick and you change the position slowly enough, she shouldn't even notice that she has an opportunity to touch it anywhere else BUT the end.

If you want to shape her to touch the end without taking away the opportunity for her to touch it anywhere else, divide the stick into eight sections. At first, click any touch of the stick at all. When she's sure of what she's doing, click any touch in the seven sections closest to the end you want her to touch. When she's good at that, reduce it to the six sections closest to the end, then five, four, three – until she's touching only the end.

ADDING A CUE: As with the hand touch, pick a word that means "touch this with your nose". Start using it when she's volunteering to touch the stick where you want her to and how you want her to. And good luck having a chance to use it – if you've done a good job of teaching her to target, targeting quickly becomes a default behaviour – if the stick is there, chances are she'll touch it!

CONTINUING EDUCATION: A cool llama trick is kissing. I teach them to touch me (and other people) on the cheek. A very simple targeting behaviour. The cue is turning your cheek to the llama. You can also get your dog to target other things – your foot, the back of her crate, or anything else you can think of. A particularly useful target object is anything that frightens the dog. If she's afraid of men, for instance, you could teach her to target shoes. Ask a stranger to sit down and cross his legs, then have the dog target his shoe. Turning the stranger into nothing more than an object to be targeted helps to give the dog confidence in her world.

LEVEL THREE

Dog targets a spot on the floor with her nose or her foot from 10’ away, with no more than two cues. A “Look” cue before sending is acceptable. This is an optional behaviour.

DISCUSSION: This is the standard "station" cue that brings dolphins to stay in one position while the trainer is talking to the audience. If you're happy with the dog always using her nose to target things, stick with that. Potential Service Dogs might have to target with their feet – to push those door-opening buttons, for instance. If you want to, take this opportunity to teach the foot touch as well. I use pink plastic targets cut from lids of plastic containers. They're easy for the dog to see, they feel different than the floor or wall, and I can cut them down to nothing as we go along.

EASY BEGINNINGS: Going for a nose target, first get the dog targeting your hand X10, then present the target in your hand, just as you presented the target stick, and start getting touches. Move the target around to her left, her right, up higher, down lower. When you've held it lower and lower, soon you'll be holding it right on the ground. When she's eager to touch it at floor level, drop it on the floor and move your hand very slightly away from it. Move your hand gradually away using 300-Peck targeting – click for her touching it in your hand near the floor, click for touching it in your hand on the floor, click for touching it on the floor with your hand very close, click for touching it on the floor with your hand an inch away, 2 inches away, 3 inches away. When she makes a mistake, go back to the beginning and start your explanation again.

Going for the paw target will take a bit more work, as she hasn't done any of this before. Start with a relatively large plastic target (I'd suggest a Rubbermaid tub lid or something else at least a foot square to start with) and work it exactly the same way you started Go To Mat. Put the target near you on the ground and click when the dog's foot accidentally touches it. Toss your treat off the target so she has a chance to come back and put her foot on it again. There is a difference between the paw target and Go To Mat though – we only need ONE paw touching it, and we don't want her to sit or lie down on it, so just click when her paw touches the target.

There are two challenges now. One is to cut the target down to something 2" in diameter, and the other is to get the targeting behaviour at the distance. The good news is that dogs usually really get a kick out of paw targets. They frequently respond to your attempt to get distance by pouncing on the target, thumping it enthusiastically with BOTH paws, or whacking it solidly with one paw held far out in front of them. These responses make the paw target an adventure at the least! Use 300-Peck to get your distance, and use a pair of scissors to shave a quarter-inch off the target each day that the dog is enthusiastic about touching it.

Move the target a few inches into a slightly different position every ten clicks – to the left, the right, further away from you. When you've had a good session one day, leave the target on the floor so you don't have to handle it at all the next day. Simply return to the training area and see if the dog is aware and enthusiastic enough about the behaviour to offer it to you cold. When she's good at that, after a good session, take the dog out of the area and return alone to move the target so when the dog returns for the next session, the target isn't in the same place.

When the target gets far enough away and in a position that the dog may not be expecting it, you'll have to be able to tell her that you want to find it and THEN target it. First, work the target at a distance of about 2' X20. The dog should be eager to get back to the target. Next time, turn her so she's facing the target. Standing is OK, but I like to start with her sitting facing it. Now you need her to look at it. If she WAS eager to get back to the target, she's probably looking at it anyway. Click, and instead of giving her a treat, release her to go touch the target. That's the reward for seeing the target. When she touches it, click and give her a treat. NOTE: this is NOT clicking twice for one treat! It's just using two different KINDS of treat, one for each click. If she doesn't immediately look at the target, do whatever you have to do to draw her attention to it. Move it a little closer. Tap it. If you're using a nose target, you could put a treat on the target. Do whatever you have to do, and click when she looks at it. If it takes her a while to figure this out, hand her a treat when you click her for finally seeing it. When she's seeking it out and staring at it, you can start releasing her to touch it after the click.

ADDING A CUE: If you're using a nose target, you can use the same cue you've used before for targeting your hand and the target stick. If you're using the paw target, you have two choices (this is a behaviour FULL of choices!). You can use a completely new cue meaning to touch with the paw (like Punch, Hit, or Paw), or you can use the same old cue you used to tell her to touch with her nose. I've always MEANT to use two cues for the two different touches, but I've never been able to remember two, so I always end up using only one. This doesn't give me any control over HOW the dog touches any particular object, but I've never noticed any of my dogs having trouble understanding that I need the object touched. Fortunately you have some time after you start teaching the behaviour before you need to start calling it something!

CONTINUING EDUCATION: Either as a trick or as an exercise in thinking for yourself, think how you would add duration to this targeting behaviour to produce a "Station", just like a dolphin!

If you've decided on the paw target, you can use double-sided carpet tape to attach your target to a wall, raising it gradually until the dog needs to go Paws Up in order to touch it. A word of warning – don't put it on a nice painted wall or you'll quickly have the wall decorated with scratch marks! This can work up to ringing a doorbell, or pushing door-opening buttons, and is a good start on the Level 5, 6, and 7 Target behaviours.

LEVEL FOUR

Dog follows and catches a touch stick, on the end only, with her nose, eager to touch the stick. There should be a voice cue, but it is not necessary in the presence of the stick. At some time the dog should demonstrate response to the cue.

DISCUSSION: We're now moving from a passive touch of an object she can reach without moving too much, to hunting down the object. If your dog has a good prey drive, the trick will be getting the behaviour without her grabbing the stick. If she has no prey drive, you can teach her what will appear to be one with the behaviour.

EASY BEGINNINGS: Start with her near you but preferably not sitting. And not under COMMAND to Stand. We don't want her anchored to a spot before we even begin! Remind her about touching the stick with her nose. Work it until she's eager to touch it. Move it around her head – up high, down low, to the left, to the right, stretched out in front.

When she's In The Game of touching the stick, move it very slightly off to one side too far for her to reach without moving a foot. Click when she touches it. She may reach for it and miss and expect a treat, but hold still, do nothing, keep looking expectantly at her. If she was really In The Game, she'll take the step and hit it. If she doesn't, do another 10 repetitions around her head just SHORT of forcing her to move to touch it, and then put it just out of her range again. It's generally easier for an animal to start moving to one side or the other rather than straight forward, which is why we're asking for the initial step to be to one side.

When she can take one step, she can take two. As she's successful to the side, you can gradually move the stick around to the front so she's stepping FORWARD to touch it.

PROBLEM SOLVING:

WHEN I MOVE THE STICK FURTHER AWAY FROM HER, SHE QUITS! There are several possibilities here.

Your rate of reinforcement wasn't high enough – that is, she wasn't eagerly playing the touch-the-stick game before you started moving it further away from her. Your click-rate before you move it further away should be AT LEAST faster than one every 6 seconds, or ten times a minute.

Your criteria was too high – we're asking for another half inch, not a foot:

Touch THIS
Touch THIS
Touch   THIS
Touch    THIS
Touch     THIS
Touch      THIS.

Your timing may have been off. Are you sure you're clicking when her nose actually touches the stick?

CONTINUING EDUCATION: A chase-able touch stick is a very useful tool. I use it for teaching spins, weaving between my legs, moving the dog here and there. Get her going farther and faster to touch it. Get her chasing it around your body as you pivot. Get her going over a low jump to touch it.

LEVEL FIVE

Dog pawtouches a wall from 10’ away. This is an optional behaviour.

DISCUSSION: This is a fun and easy way to teach the Utility Go-Back exercise. When you don't know how to do it, it looks very difficult. In fact, it's pretty easy to teach, and most dogs really enjoy it.

LEVEL SIX

Dog pawtouches a wall 20’ away with two cues only. This is an optional behaviour.

DISCUSSION: More distance is all we need at this Level. Be careful – make sure the dog continues to go out straight in front of you!

LEVEL SEVEN

Dog does a straight go-back to pawtouch a wall 40’ away with two cues maximum. This is an optional behaviour.

DISCUSSION: A 40' Go Back, fast, straight, and enthusiastic. You'll get compliments for this one!