Body Part Targeting

[corvus]

After months of practising body part targeting with Kivi, he now does either front foot, his nose, and left and right hip. I only discovered last night that he could do right hip. He showed me a really nice generalisation of the concept by doing that one when I cued it even though I haven't actually taught it to him. So now I'm thinking it's time to generalise some more and do other body parts and start teaching him to target with two body parts at once. I am thinking back feet are next, and maybe chin. I think he also needs some work on his front paws, as he seems to get confused about them. I expect it's just a matter of practise and encouraging thinking outside the box. Kivi loves thinking inside the box, which is why I've been doing all this targeting in the first place.

Has anyone else done some body targeting work? Any pearls of wisdom to offer me? I've started using intermediate bridges and stationary targets. All in all, Kivi is a much happier dog and targeting is heaps of fun.

[Kavik]

Mine do nose and paw

[W Sibs]

Charlie is nose and paw too :D

[Staranais]

Interesting. We can target nose (her default), front paws, back feet (that took a while), all feet, and hips. Some of those are more fluent than others, e.g. we haven't named hips yet but if I touch her hip to demonstrate she can then target it for me.

Have tried to teach left from right front paws, but she seems to find that very confusing. Possibly not surprising, as my lefts & rights aren't great either! :D

Am currently teaching her to spin left on voice command alone, so hopefully I can introduce a different right spin cue later & get her understanding the concept of left vs right that way. It's how some farmers do it with heading dogs to teach them to cast different directions around the flock.

[TerraNik]

Nose, each front paw and rear paws together.

[m-j]

I've started using intermediate bridges and stationary targets.

I found intermediate bridges invaluable for duration and adding another target of another body part or removing the original target to get the dog to target to another object i.e putting the dogs chin on the ground or a target I can't move to get the dog to target to, by using my fingers as the original target.

Not sure if this will help but with the front feet I changed the way I presented the target for the different feet as different words seemed to mean diddly squat to the dog, but maybe that's just a me issue.

cheers

M-J

[corvus]

Thanks M-J. For a bit there I was using a different object to target for right paw and left paw, but at the moment I'm teaching him to move towards a touch, so it's not a huge deal to just touch the paw I want him to lift. Having said that, I think it'd be easier if he lifted his front paws on verbal or hand signal because they are kinda hard to reach sometimes and if he sees a target stick around his front somewhere he defaults to nose targeting it. Maybe I should work on that, actually. It sounds like it's not uncommon for dogs to get mixed up between their right and left front paws. That's funny, as it's not uncommon for humans, either!

[m-j]

It sounds like it's not uncommon for dogs to get mixed up between their right and left front paws. That's funny, as it's not uncommon for humans, either!

Gosh no, not this human anyway.

I sometimes need to think about driving a car to determine left and right (Temple Grandin's Thinking in Pictures comes to mind when I do) I would be stuffed in America

cheers

M-J

[bedazzledx2]

LOL Other left dufas!!!! My dogs know left and right much better than I do! I actually taught it for agility but I can't spit it out fast enough and often get it wrong anyway so its just a party trick

It sounds like it's not uncommon for dogs to get mixed up between their right and left front paws. That's funny, as it's not uncommon for humans, either!

Gosh no, not this human anyway.

I sometimes need to think about driving a car to determine left and right (Temple Grandin's Thinking in Pictures comes to mind when I do) I would be stuffed in America

cheers

M-J

[corvus]

It always makes me laugh. I mean, it's 50/50, the odds of getting it right by chance alone are not bad, but the number of times I say left when I'm thinking right in my head, or when someone asks me left or right and although I know which way it is, I have to think about it for a moment and even then only say the right one about 60% of the time... I've come to suspect the concept of left and right is a relatively new one that humans have not yet evolved to understand.

[bedazzledx2]

Ummm....I'll go along with that

It always makes me laugh. I mean, it's 50/50, the odds of getting it right by chance alone are not bad, but the number of times I say left when I'm thinking right in my head, or when someone asks me left or right and although I know which way it is, I have to think about it for a moment and even then only say the right one about 60% of the time... I've come to suspect the concept of left and right is a relatively new one that humans have not yet evolved to understand.