Resq TailsThe trials and triumphs of rescued dogs

Well, the dogs and I have been working on some new targeting skills. I, like most people have taught the dogs a “touch” skill. Until Rogue, all my younger dogs did a typical nose bump of whatever the target was. LOL Leave it to Rogue to make me do a little more thinking! What a girl!

When I asked for a “touch” with Rogue she would try to use her paws along with her nose. If she could get away with it, she’d just use her paws and no nose. So…”hit it” was born for Rogue. I decided that I differentiate the two skills for her. If the target is vertical…like on a wall, fence, baby gates, etc. I will ask her to use her nose and “touch”. If it’s horizontal, like a target on the ground or a hand held flat and horizontal, I will ask for a “hit it”. It’s been working pretty well for her.

Since Rogue prefers the “hit it” version of targeting I decided to try incorporating it into her “say hi” to new people routine. I’m having her approach the person, and having them give her their hand flat and horizontal and they ask her to “hit it”. She can give them her version of a handshake of sorts as a polite greeting and she seems more comfortable with that.

Now for the other dogs…teaching “hit it” took a bit more work. I was using a small lid on the ground to start with. Raven was convinced that if it’s a target…you should use your nose, no matter what mom says. LOL So, I figured that to get her to use her paw I would have to give her a bit more incentive to find out what was under that lid. I made sure that she saw me place a treat under the lid. If you try this, you have to make sure that you’re holding the lid down tight, or they’ll flip it over without their paw and reward a different behavior. It didn’t take her long to figure out that she wasn’t going to get to that treat easily, so she gave it a dig with her paw. That was exactly the reaction I was looking for, and she got the treat. Well, that took all of about 3 repetitions, and now Raven’s a pro at “hit it” too!

The older girls who haven’t had the same kind of training struggled a bit longer in figuring out how to get that treat from under the lid, but they’re doing great now too. Thanks to Rogue for a new targeting skill!