Maybe
your dog has mastered basic obedience and you are looking for something more to
teach him or maybe you just want to teach your dog to play dead so you can
entertain guests.Either way,
teaching tricks is fun for you and your dog and tricks are more than just
entertainment.
Anything
you teach your dog is great brain-work for him.I believe that dogs should always be taught new things no
matter how old they are or how much they know.Learning keeps them busy and provides them with much needed
mental stimulation.It also
greatly strengthens the human-animal bond having to work together.
Tricks
aren’t just for entertainment anymore either.You can teach your dog to fetch a soda for you, take your
socks off or pick up dropped items.How about teaching them to turn the lights off at night?Why not put your dog to work for you,
he will be ecstatic about his new employment.
Other
tricks are for entertainment and include tricks like shake, high-five, sit
pretty/beg, bang! dead dog, jump through the hoop, speak and my own dog even
plays patty-cake and counts to five.
In
this article I will outline how to teach your dog to “touch” and in future
articles I will cover other tricks.“Touch” is the foundation for teaching other more complex behaviors such
as turning out a light or shutting a door.Once your dog knows “touch” you can get him to “touch”
other items by simply placing the target where you want him to touch.
First
you have to decide whether your dog is going to “touch” with his paw or with
his nose.In this case we will
train using his nose.You will
also need to decide what he is going to touch, a target stick?Your palm?Either will do but in this case we will use our palm and I
like to use a sticker stuck on my hand as the target so that later on I can
move the sticker wherever I want him to “touch”.
Step
1- Hold out your hand or the target stick and wait for your dog to touch it
with his nose.This shouldn’t take
long because dogs explore everything with their noses.Make sure to capture the moment by
clicking at the exact moment and treating.
Step 2- Soon your dog will figure out
that what you want is for him to touch the item with his nose.When this happens you can begin to add
the verbal cue “touch”.Start
moving the target around so your dog has to follow it in order to touch it.
Now your dog knows “touch” and how easy
was that to teach?Now you can
start using the target to have your dog perform useful tasks like shutting the
door behind him or pushing the on/off button on the TV.
