How to Teach Your Dog To Touch?

It is possible to teach your dog how to touch objects at home easily when you know how dogs react to certain things. Before getting started you will need an object of your choice, a prize dish (with small pieces of its favorite food), and clicker tool which will help us to grab the attention of our lovely pets with its strong click sound during our commands.

Step 1: Introducing the Clicker

First of all we need to introduce clicker to our pet. Some dogs may understand after a few practice, some dogs may need much more practice depending on their varities. Sometimes it may be needed to go back to the beginning and introduce the clicker again. It requires some level of patience, if you do not have patience, it is better not to attempt to dog training.

Here is the steps to introduce the clicker to your dog. The training starts with pressing the clicker without a reason and followed by a prize. After he got it, click the clicker and give his prize. Repeat this again. When you click the clicker, you arise expectation of your dog for getting the prize. So after some practice, your dog will expect food after the clicker sound. This is exactly what we wanted to achieve in this step.

Step 2: Introducing the Object to Touch

Now we need an object for teaching the touch command which can be anything close to you during this training. Let's assume that it's a pencil. In order to introduce the object to your dog, simply take the pencil in your hand and touch its right paw with it while clicking the clicker at the same time and giving its prize immediately. Practice it one more time with is left paw this time. Do it one more time both with the right paw and the left paw.

3 or 4 times practice may be enough for a clever dog to expect prize after going through this combination of touching the pencil, hearing the click sound and getting the prize combination. If not, practice it more to provide your dog get used to this combination.

Step 3: Waiting for the Dog to Touch the Object Without the Clicker

In step 3, we can expect that the dog will try to touch the object without any stimulation by our side. To test this, put the object somewhere close to him and do nothing but wait. Do not click the clicker and make any other noise. Just wait and note that it may take minutes. Jus be patient and wait. Give it some time to think. It will remember that he was able to get the prize whenever he touched the pencil. If it takes more time than you expected, then move the pencil back and forth to grab its attention so that it can remember that pencil and prize connection.

If there's no attempt of touching the object, go back again to step 2 and practice more this combination of touch, clicker and prize.

Whenever your dog touches the pencil, press the clicker and give the prize immediately. Do nothing and wait again so that it will touches the pencil again and again so that the dog memorizes this practice and it becomes an automatic action for the dog to ask for the prize.

Step 4: Adding the "Touch" Command

Unless we do something to prevent this, this dog will touch the object repeatedly to get the prize since it learned that he gets the prize whenever it touches the pencil. Now we must stop it from asking you to get prize whenever the touches the pencil.

In order to stop him from dictating you, you need a verbal command which will permit him to touch the object after hearing that command. In order to do that; you will make the same set of behaviours with a small addition; the moment it touches the pencil, you command "touch" while you click the clicker and then repeat this process a few times and test if it has already memorised the touch command.

Now change the place of the object and put it a different place a little far and say again verbally "touch" while pointing the book. Prevent your dog from touching the object on its own will. It must be done with your with your verbal command of "touch". This is important. At the end, you will see that the only time it will touch the object of your choice when you ask it to "touch" while pointing the object.