Homework: Hand Target

With hand targeting, the dog learns to boop your palm with their nose. An adorable trick with many practical uses.

It’s a low-effort cue that’s pretty easy for dogs to do, compared to something like Sit or Watch Me. That makes it a good exercise that we’ll build off of throughout the course, in order to:

• Start teaching your dog to follow cues in the presence of distractions.
• Assess your dog’s training readiness when you take them out in public.
• Do training exercises we’ll introduce later, that require the dog to move away from a reward in order to receive the reward (which is pretty counterintuitive for dogs!)
• Build your training skills. It’s a good way to practice your timing.

In week one, practice this exercise in one or two low-distraction environments. Like your living room, kitchen, or bedroom. If your dog doesn’t get easily distracted in your backyard, you can use that, too.