Teaching your dog to target your hand and other objects with their nose is great for keeping your dog’s attention around distractions and building more advanced behaviors later.

To start with, present a flat hand towards your dog and wait for them to investigate. Mark and reward as soon as their nose makes contact with your hand.

If your dog struggles initially, you can always rub a treat on your hand to get them interested and help them succeed.

After a few repetitions, hold your hand further away, so that your dog has to take a step in order to make contact. Practice in all directions and with both hands so your dog understands all the variations.

From here you can start to create a moving target, by continuing to move your hand as your dog is approaching. This is a really important step if you want to use hand targeting to teach your dog new behaviors in the future.

When your dog has mastered the art of nose targeting, you will be able to teach so many follow-on behaviors, including peekaboo, stand and paws up.