Target Training

[corvus]

This is going to be a rambling post because I'm not sure what I'm doing.

I'm currently teaching Kivi targeting. He gets easily frustrated in training and likes a lot of help, so I thought if I taught him to target I'd be able to show him what I wanted him to do and just make it nice and easy for him. He is currently targeting my target stick quite nicely over short distances with his nose, and I'm working on duration and movement. He will stick his nose to the ball on the end of the stick and he'll follow it, say, around the clothesline heading away from me, but he doesn't seem thoroughly sure of himself yet.

Eventually, I want to teach him to target with other parts of his body as well. My temptation is to start on that nowish, but another part of me thinks maybe I should stick with the nose targeting until it's stronger, maybe another week or so until he's really sure of himself?

I was going to use the touch of the target stick as a cue for what body part I wanted him to move, because he's a really touchy feely kinda dog and it seemed to make sense to use that, but now I realise that that's really geared towards close work. I'm not sure if that matters or not. Probably not so much for Kivi, who I'm training for fun.

I need to clarify it all in my head. Can I teach him to target the stick with his nose as a default and add touch cues for different body parts, or do you think that would be a bit confusing? How strong should his basic nose targeting be before I teach him to target with something else?

[kiesha09]

With my first dog I taught nose targets first but they were consistent but not really solid. Then I taught foot targets. This created a dog who really didn't know either on cue and would always offer me both. Was kinda frustrating to undo

With my second dog I tried to get my dogs nose touch as solid as possible and then moved onto targeting with other body parts. I made sure that they could follow my target stick as well as go to a stationary target that was at least 5 metres away from me and this was reliably on cue. Then I made it more complicated and had her go over jumps to a target, around poles to a target etc. Only when this was probably 95% reliable on cue did I move to another body part target. Was the best decision I ever made with no confusion for her. Plus I noticed that the first few things took a while for her to catch on eg. nose, front foot touch, back foot touch with duration but after that she caugh on so quickly for things like the top of her paw (used to make her lift up her foot), hip targeting and best of all a tail target!! (looks good for a water pump trick).

ETA - should actually answer your question: Yes you can have a nose touch as a default and touch cues for other body parts. If I presented a target with no cue they would both nose touch. If you have them all reliably on cue you shouldn't have too much trouble.

Edited November 6, 2009 by kiesha09

[Luke W]

This is going to be a rambling post because I'm not sure what I'm doing.

I'm currently teaching Kivi targeting. He gets easily frustrated in training and likes a lot of help, so I thought if I taught him to target I'd be able to show him what I wanted him to do and just make it nice and easy for him. He is currently targeting my target stick quite nicely over short distances with his nose, and I'm working on duration and movement. He will stick his nose to the ball on the end of the stick and he'll follow it, say, around the clothesline heading away from me, but he doesn't seem thoroughly sure of himself yet.

Eventually, I want to teach him to target with other parts of his body as well. My temptation is to start on that nowish, but another part of me thinks maybe I should stick with the nose targeting until it's stronger, maybe another week or so until he's really sure of himself?

I was going to use the touch of the target stick as a cue for what body part I wanted him to move, because he's a really touchy feely kinda dog and it seemed to make sense to use that, but now I realise that that's really geared towards close work. I'm not sure if that matters or not. Probably not so much for Kivi, who I'm training for fun.

I need to clarify it all in my head. Can I teach him to target the stick with his nose as a default and add touch cues for different body parts, or do you think that would be a bit confusing? How strong should his basic nose targeting be before I teach him to target with something else?

I ran into problems with Barkly targeting multiple parts of his body.

I would make sure his nose touch is very strong before you introduce any other targeting. If you really want to do it at all.

I would make sure his verbal cue is absolutely rock solid and that he doesn't nose target without the verbal cue.

When you introduce a new body part - his natural tendency is going to be to use your body or target cue and nose touch.

[corvus]

Ah, thanks guys! Might start taking the target with me when we go out and get him nose targeting in some different surroundings. I was going to skip stationary targets for now, but sounds like I should not be lazy and impatient and make sure his nose targeting is really solid.

[Kavik]

My dogs both nose and paw target. I use different 'props' for each to make it easy and clear to them which one I want. For nose targets I usually use my hand or a target stick (nose tends to be their default and easy to transfer to other things), paw is a rectangle of something on the ground. I found paw to be more complicated to shape.

I would not use multiple types of body part with the same cue (or prop) as this will be confusing.