Able and I are working through all the exercises in our Fenzi course on calm greeting behaviour. One of the assignments was to teach the puppy a nose-to-hand target, and then get him to do that with people he greets. It’s an interesting idea to give a busy puppy something to do, besides sproinging up into the person’s face.
Able’s hand targets are already really strong, but I’m dubious that he’ll be calm enough to recognise an outstretched hand from a strange person as a cue to hand target on them. I thought I’d train him to nose target on a prop – this should provide a more distinct visual cue that can be transferred to another person.
So this week I taught him to target on a peanut butter lid. He already knew how to do it when it was in my hand, and then I stuck it up on various vertical surfaces with BluTak so that he could learn to look away from me for his nose target. After playing around a bit with this, I managed to turn it into a fun, active game that teaches some foundation agility skills – just the thing for a nasty winter night!
The Setup
You’ll need two small cardboard boxes, a small target, and something to stick it up with. I found that the BluTak was not really sticky enough to withstand my puppy’s enthusiastic nose touches, but I couldn’t think of a better alternative that could be easily transferred between surfaces.
Place a box on your armchair of misfits to elevate it to puppy head height (let’s be honest, I already had two boxes I hadn’t unpacked yet on my armchair of misfits). Stick the target to the box, stand in front of it with your puppy between your legs, and send him to target. Deliver his cookie right next to the target. This is very important in agility training – deliver rewards where you want the dog to be, not where you happen to be.
Adding Distance
One of the big challenges for many people in agility is teaching their dog to work confidently at a distance. If you have long legs and know how to use them, you don’t need to put as much effort into this – but it still comes in handy sometimes. On the other hand, I came last in every single running race of my school career, starting with the 5-year-olds’ cross-country. To be competitive in agility, I need my dogs to be happy working 10m ahead of me.
We gradually moved back across the living room, until I could send Able about 3 metres to his target. I followed along behind him so that I could reinforce him at the target. I was really pleased to see him looking forward intently as I set him up, and crossing the room without looking back at me once.
The Switcheroo
I was a bit dubious about whether my puppy was really visually marking the target, rather than just hurtling across the room to the place where he assumed it would be. There happened to be a second box on the armchair of misfits, next to the one I was placing the target on, so I pulled a little switcheroo on him and put it on the other box.
I started about half a metre back from the box. Remember – when you’re increasing one criteria, relax the other ones. I got him hyped up with a little game of chase-the-hand-targets, then I turned him around and pointed him at the boxes.
Busted! Able slammed his face into the wrong box four times before I took pity on him and showed him where I’d hidden his target. We did a few repetitions with the target in its new location, and then I switched it back. This time he targeted the wrong box twice before succeeding on the third try.
Agility dogs need forward drive and speed, but they also need to think about where they’re going. They need to chase their handler at top speed, but also keep an eye out for jumps near their path that they are supposed to take. They need to look at each jump, find the best takeoff point and adjust their stride to get there. They need to look at the weaves, find the correct entry, and collect themselves so that their momentum doesn’t carry them straight past it.
Able is now a master at finding the target no matter which box it’s on, or even if I cheat and put it on a third box next to the chair. Let’s hope he will also be a master at finding his way around an agility course!