If you'd like to participate in our 14-Day Dog Training Challenge, you've come to the right place! You can find all 14 days of challenges here - be sure to read the accompanying descriptions as well. You can do the entire challenge at your own pace, and/or simply pick and choose the challenges you want to work on. However, the challenges are meant to build on each other, so we recommend giving them a try in the order we've laid them out!
Without further ado:
Day 1 Dog Training Challenge: Hand Target
(Trainer Alex):
Hand Targeting.
The foundation of the training process with your dog.
Read through before starting 👇
As you work through this exercise, really be mindful of exactly what behavior you're marking for your dog. It should be the exact moment your dog's nose touches your hand. Your marker word "yes" tells the dog "that's it!" and helps them understand what they should be repeating.
Be consistent with your marker word and use it every time you do a repetition! It's going to come in handy for later challenges.
This can be used as a "cheat" recall, can make for a less stressful greeting for an insecure dog, and is great for socializing puppies to a hand coming towards them.
It's also a great opportunity to start practicing INTERMITTENT reinforcement. Once your dog is doing well, start rewarding more unpredictably. They might have to do just one to get a reward, or they might have to do 2, 4, etc.
If you've done targeting before with your dog, we still recommend watching the video, as you may learn more about your timing, mechanics, and more.
Level Up (Found at 5:15 in the video): "Go Say Hi"
Some of our challenges will contain a LEVEL UP, an advanced version of the behavior for you to try.
If you want to advance the targeting behavior, try our level up!
"Go Say Hi" teaches your dog to greet a person by touching their hand, and then returning back to you.
This is especially useful for jumpy dogs or otherwise rude greeters - it makes YOU the most interesting part of a greeting.
Don't have a second person? I'll bet you can get creative about what you use as the "person"!