Shaping and Targeting

In September I gave a workshop at the annual meeting of the Association for Pet Dog Trainers, always both an honor and a pleasure. In the workshop I demonstrated an exercise I'd learned, at an earlier APDT meeting, from Massachusetts trainer Tibby Chase, for teaching inattentive dogs to walk politely at a person's side. The exercise involves targeting and shaping, and works even if neither the handler nor the dog know anything about clicker training. APDT had arranged for a pet owner to bring three friendly but largely untrained dogs. None of the dogs were accustomed to being in public, and while they were fairly quiet they were of course trying to smell everything and greet everyone, pulling on their leashes and paying very little attention to the person holding them. The owner found a volunteer handler for each dog so I could put them through the exercise, one at a time.

I like to start with something that's very simple and easy to understand. I'm going to teach the horse to touch his nose to an object. I've found this works really well in part because it is outside the horse's normal training program. It's so different from anything else he's been asked to do, he has to pay attention to figure me out.