You may have never heard of target training, but it’s actually a super useful training skill to have all-round for many situations with your dog.
In this post, we’ll be discussing what is target training and what you can use it for.
What is Target Training?
Target training is teaching your dog to touch a target, for example, your hand with their nose or paw. When you give the command, they should go to their target and touch it.
The target can be anything from your hand to an object.
What can you use Target Training for?
This type of training is useful in many scenarios like training, grooming and just everyday life with your dog. But let’s start off with training.
Target training can be a great help in training more complex commands and tricks. In our ‘2 Exciting Tricks and How to Train Them‘ post, we discussed the Walking Leg Weave and the Toe Tap. Both of these commands can use target training to make the training process simpler.
The Walking Leg Weave is a command where your dog weaves in and out of your legs, to train this you can guide them through and reward each time. However, another easy option is having your dog on one side, hold your hand out for them to nose target and then once they go to target it, they’ll be moving under your leg.
The Toe Tap is essentially just a bunch of paw targeting. This command consists of holding your foot out for your dog to touch. When you are holding your foot out, you are presenting them with ‘the target’ and when they touch your foot with their paw, they are rewarded. So, this command isn’t really trained with target training, it’s more target training itself.
Target training can also be useful in other scenarios. It can be a great command for when you want to distract your dog from something or get them to look away. You can even teach your dog some very fun tricks like closing doors, communicating with buttons, and anything that involves them touching, pressing, or even leaning against something.
Have fun with target training, and you can use it to train some pretty awesome and useful commands!
Read These Related Posts Next
- 2 Exciting Tricks and How To Train Them
- Clicker Training: How To Use A Dog Training Clicker
- How To Get The Most Out Of Your Training Sessions
- How To Get Started With Agility
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