Teaching the touch command

[Kayla]

I'm curious as to how a touch command is taught to a dog. I'm assuming a clicker would be useful and what types of things you can teach a dog after the touch command as closing a door, opening doors, picking up objects along with other such things.

Thanks
Kayla

[Lilavati]

Here's how I did it:

Have some treats and a clicker.

Place your open hand, palm towards the dog, just a bit in front of his/her nose

Wait for him/her to bump it with their nose (I'm told they almost always do this, if not you can put a little bit of peanut butter on your palm)

When they bump your hand, click and treat

After a few repetitions, start saying "touch!" right when they bump your hand.

Gradually start moving your hand further away and at different angles.

My dog picked up the basics of this in about 10 tries . . . she seems to love it: its really easy and means she gets a treat.

[houndlove]

"Touch" is about the easiest command to teach pretty much ever. Both my dogs are aces with it. You basically just turn the target (when I began with it I used my index and middle finger held together a la the "scout's honor" gesture, to differentiate it from me just pointing at something or holding my hand out) in to a treat slot machine for the dog. Most dogs will investigate with their noses something held out in front of them so it's easy to click and treat for that first tentative touch and after that I've found it takes about 2.5 seconds for them to completely catch on. Then it's just a matter of putting it on cue and then generalizing to other things.

[Dasher's Mom]

I taught touch and target using a plate as opposed to my hand. Pretty easy to do. I set a plate on the ground as soon as my dog goes to sniff the plate he gets clicked and treated. I always put the treat on the plate, I don't feed from my hand when teaching touch and target. Doesn't take him long to figure it out. Once he understands that touching the plate pays off I add distance. I am able to send him to the plate saying "go target" then ask him to touch. "touch" for me means nose on the plate. Eventually I remove the plate and my guys will "chicken peck":D the ground when I ask them to touch.

I use target and touch for agility training (teaching contacts) so thats how it has become useful for me.