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TRAINING

• Head Through Harness
• Restraint
• Paw Targeting / Shake

Head Through.

We covered the “Head Through Harness” skill in a previous lesson.  Be sure to practice that with your puppy. You can also start off with just teaching your puppy to target a collar so that there are fewer moving parts to bang into the puppy’s face.

Restraint.

Start on your knees or the balls of your feet, with your chest upright.

Lure the puppy in a U-shape so he is now facing away from you. Mark and treat. Do that several times until you can easily get the puppy in position.

Repeat that but ask for a sit at the end, either verbally or with a lure. Mark and reinforce for the sit.

Pet the puppy in this position for a very short period of time. If she remains seated, mark and reinforce. This Sit Stay is your More Please Signal for the restraint, so if she moves at any time, just wait or get up, move away, and crouch back down. When she approaches you again, lure her back into the Sit-Stay, facing away from you.

Repeat, gradually adding more time in the Sit-Stay before each treat.  Build up to about 10-15 seconds

Repeat. Starting to add some petting, touch to the neck, and eventually restraint with her head held away from the “vet tech” Reduce the time between treats whenever you add something new. [Note: to use empowerment to its fullest, teach a chin target to your hand, so that your puppy is SELF-restraining.]

Add the cotton ball press as your marker. Set a treat or toy away from her where she can see it, but can’t get to it, and then do a light restraint. Press the cotton ball for a few seconds. Say a release cue, like “Free” and help her go get the treat. Build up quickly to the 5-second cotton ball press and then be consistent with the timing after that.

Extend the duration of the restraint and practice in different areas. Visit the vet just to do training for things like this and getting a weight on the scale, etc.

Paw Targeting.

This is similar to shaking paws, but it’s not really what I’m looking for. Don’t grab your dog’s paw and shake it up and down like a human shaking hands in a Western country. What I want is for your dog to target your paw and for you to hold it steady, to prepare for nail trimming or for putting on a harness. If you want to add the handshake movement for your own entertainment, that’s up to you.

You might be able to use capturing to get this behavior. To do that, just hold a treat and wait for your puppy to paw your hand. Put your other hand out so that he will accidentally hit it on the way down, and that’s when you will mark and treat.

Try that first. If that works, awesome. If not, let’s teach it using shaping. Or if you just want to learn more about shaping, try this way.

Here’s a good way to teach your puppy to target, by Kim from the AdimusDogServices YouTube channel in the UK. It’s easier to use a different target that seems different than the one that you used for a nose touch. Use something sturdy, like a coaster or lid.

This target can then be extended to the shake. I really prefer this way over the old “grab the paw” way.

For the back paws, you can either do proper targeting, as above (which is harder) or do a Stay where you can say “hind paw” to let the dog know that’s what you’re touching next. Stay is the More Please Signal that says that the dog is still willing to put up with you touching his back paws in exchange for your treats. In other words, it’s ok to continue the “empowered counterconditioning.”

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