Teaching a Nose Target Your Hand: A Key Skill for Dogs

This skill is the basic building block of many behaviors such as the retrieve, sending your dog away from you to do distance work, mat training, leading your dog over, under around, heeling, targeting objects etc. Jessie is not new to nose targeting so expect that your dog will take many more repetitions to understand it.
It was taught using frozen peas and carrots as the reward!
If your dog is having trouble learning this, send me a message!
1. My dog licks or mouths my hand. What can I do?
Angle your hand so the first thing that will touch is his nose and click just before he makes contact so he is getting c/t for nose touches, not tongue or tooth contact. Remember: you get what you click. You can also pull your hand away for 3 seconds or so when he mouths or bites and then present your hand again,

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• teaching
• canine
• nose target
• hand target
• clicker training
• positive dog

[cellist81]

what kind of dog do you have?? It looks EXACTLY like my puppy who is 6 months old! He is a very smart dog and I'm going to be trying to teach him this!!

[supernaturalbc2009]

@cellist81 She's a 30lb fine-boned dog who's mom was a GSDX and whose dad was likely a miniature pinscher. They do pick up on this quickly. Just make sure not to mark and reward licks or bites or that is what you will get!

[ilovecanines]

Very well done! I'm going to use this as a reference for my students!

[supernaturalbc2009]

@ilovecanines Glad it's helpful!

[MultiAnimalcrackers]

Another excellent vid...it is great to start a puppy off with hand targets, i use this behaviour to teach them 'stand' and many more things. I do get them to target up high as it was the way i taught them to jump straight up off the ground by using my hand initally, to give them an idea of the behaviour and then fading it out.

It is also one of the first behaviours i teach to my cat who is clicker trained:)

[VTECsqznN2O]

Great video. Personally I find this the most important thing I teach. Five stars

[tehrenberg]

Such a useful skill, every dog should know this one. 5*

[f1el6]

jessie is so cute :) targeting is very usefull in agility as a recall. i also found that essential while training retrieve, it was just the thing i needed to get pipsa bring the dumbell to my hand. excellent video!

[tab289]

Nice one! It really is one of the most essential cues. I sometimes use it for a really close recall.

[MuttVids]

Jessie's great! I just started targeting training with post it notes for my fearful Rescue (the notes go on things she's fearful of..like bikes)..this vid reminds me to get started on hand targeting already! 5 *'s!