Strengthen Dog Response Come When Called

1. Get your puppy's attention by calling their name or making a few kissy noises, encouraging them to come to you.

2. Once you have their attention present an open hand, palm up, directly under the puppy's nose for a long second and wait. Do NOT move your hand.

3. The moment they touch their nose to your hand, mark and reward with a treat from your opposite hand. If the dog does nothing, say the No Reward Marker and remove your hand. Wait a couple of seconds before trying again. If still your puppy does not respond by touching their nose to your hand when represented, try marking and rewarding any movement towards your hand such as looking at your hand or stepping towards it.

4. Continue to repeat this until your puppy touches your hand with their nose 90% of the time when your present it under their nose.

5. Present your open hand again under the dog's nose. While your pet is already reaching to touch your open hand say the word “Touch” just before your pet makes contact. The moment your dog touches your hand, say your reward marker and give them a treat from the opposite hand they touched. Continue to do this about 10-20 times to build the association of the cue and the behavior.

6. Next, say the cue “touch” at the same time you present your target hand. If at any time your dog does not touch when you say the cue, say the No Reward Marker and remove your target hand.

7. Slowly raise the difficulty of the behavior by presenting your target further away from your puppy. Always remember to mark the instant your dog’s nose touches your hand. Never move your hand towards the dog as they go to touch your hand. We want our pet to be the one to initiate contact. If your puppy only gently touches your hand, do not give your reward marker. Now that Targeting is a known behavior, we only want to mark better than average performances like sprinting towards your hand, touching perfectly in the middle of your palm or listening to the cue around distractions, all deserve jackpot rewards! If your dog doesn't comply 90% of the time, you have probably moved too far ahead too quickly. Break the exercise down into smaller steps by going back a few steps and making it a little easier.

Training Tips: When you present your hand, make sure to keep it perfectly still in the beginning. We want to teach our dog to go all the way to our target and initiate contact.

Mark and reinforce perfect performances with jackpots to shape the behavior to be more reliable.

Practice having your dog do two or three touches before getting the reward.

Slowly introduce distractions at a distance. Touch can be used to keep your dog's attention when passing by other dogs, squirrels, or people.

If the behavior regresses at any time, go back to step one and practice in a quiet and low distraction area so you can see exactly where you or your dog may be confused.Targeting can be used to introduce a multitude of different behaviors like Recall, Spin, weaving between your legs, crawl, etc. You can also increase the duration the your pet touches the target to help with holding still for vet visits, grooming, and so on. You can even introduce targeting to work on having your pet touch different objects, other dogs, or people to help conquer fear or just to have fun!