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Shaping and Targeting

How to Teach Your Dog Left and Right

This is a fun exercise that is handier than it seems at first. You'll set up two targets at a distance, and teach your dog to go to either target—left or right—on cue. Later, you will set up similar exercises to bring more general meaning to the cues "left" or "right."

A dog that understands "left" and "right" has a terrific skill for many competition venues including agility, herding, mushing, water dog, and retrieving. This understanding would also be handy walking on trails—and service dog owners could think of a dozen or more applications for "left" and "right."

Helping Shy Dogs Blossom Using Targeting

Shy dogs are an especially difficult challenge in the shelter environment because it is so hard for them to establish trust. We have found that teaching these dogs to target our hand can help many shy dogs develop confidence with people fairly quickly. You can't begin to try this method until there is at least one person (staff or volunteer) the shy dog has a little trust in.

Target training teaches the dog to touch his nose to some object or person for a click and then treat. (If the shy dog is very noise reactive, you may choose to use a "soft" voice marker or a muffled clicker)

How to Clicker Train Your Critter

Why train your critter?

Ferrets, hamsters, mice, rats, sugar gliders, flying squirrels, guinea pigs, rabbits, chinchillas, and other small pets.

Train Your Bunny to Sit in an Easter Basket

Enjoy spring with a real Easter Bunny—yours! Here's how to train your rabbit to climb into a basket and stay there, as excerpted from Getting Started: Clicking with your Rabbit by Joan Orr and Teresa Lewin.

Clickin’ Chickens: How Training Chickens Helped Me Become Leader of the Peck

Trust the force

As a life-long fan of sci-fi movies, it brought a smile to my face to hear one of my training heroes say “Trust the force.”