Following their nose is one of the things that dogs do best. This is not just because they are super smellers; where their nose leads, the rest of their body physically follows. If you hold a tasty-smelling treat in front of your dog and move it from left to right, you can see that they will adjust their entire head and body to allow their nose to follow and get close to the treat. As dog owners, we can take advantage of this natural phenomenon to help train our pups to touch targets with their noses and thus go to specific places that we ask them to. You can use target training to help distract anxious dogs, maintain control over reactive dogs, or simply as a way to reconnect and redirect during training and play.
Teaching to Target with their Nose
A dog’s strong sense of smell causes them to be easily tempted to sniff interesting things. Begin target training by first getting them to touch their nose to your flat palm. You’ll want your clicker in hand if you use one, and plenty of treats to use as rewards.
- Extend your hand palm and hold it a couple of inches away from your dog’s nose.
- Odds are they will voluntarily lean forward to sniff your palm without the need for you to encourage them or use a treat as a lure. As soon as their nose comes into contact with your palm, click or say “yes” and reward them with a treat placed in the middle of your palm. This specific placement strengthens their association with touching your palm and receiving a reward.
- That’s it! Keep repeating this motion of holding out your hand and rewarding them when they make contact. Start holding your hand slightly farther away from their nose as they get better at bumping it.
- Once they are consistently targeting your hand from a few inches away, add in your cue word. This may be “touch”, “target”, or any other term you want to use. Speak the cue, then hold out your hand as you have been. Mark and reward when they touch your palm.
- As your pup progresses in its training, increase the distance between yourself and your dog. Add distractions as well, like asking them to target while you’re around the rest of your family or outside in the yard. You can even start telling them to target different objects (a ball or their leash, for example).
Touch comes in handy in many ways. It can be helpful when trying to get your pup into a certain position to work on obedience training -you can hold your palm on the ground and tell them to touch in order to get them laying down or to bring them into a standing position from sitting. You can use it as a basis for recall training to call them back to your side, or use it to get them back into the proper position if they wander while you’re working on their “heel”. You can even use it to help show them how to spin. Since target training can be used as a guide when teaching a variety of behaviors and tricks, it’s a great skill to introduce early on in your pup’s training journey.
If you need help with puppy training and live in the Bradenton or Sarasota area, call Gulf Coast K9 Dog Training. We offer classes for puppies, mature dogs, and every canine in between.
