The Power of Touch

Bello has been working on the touch alert for his service dog skills.  The touch game is the basis of many of the skills he will need to be able to perform his job for me. The touch skill will allow him to get my attention to alert for medical condition.

Bello seems to enjoy this game.  What I do is hold my hand out to him palm down. Usually this will trigger a dog to at least smell or look at your hand to see if you have anything for them.  When Bello looks or smells my hand I use the clicker to click and say the word touch.  Then I reward him.  If a dog doesn't pay attention to your hand, in the beginning it is ok to move your hand towards the dog's nose with a gentle touch and reward that behavior.  In the beginning it is fine to reward if they show any attention to your hand such as looking or sniffing.

Bello has progressed from general interest of my hand to actually bumping my hand with his nose, so we reward him every time.  We generally spend about 5-10 mins on this game and alternate it with the previously mentioned eye contact game and the name game.

As Bello progresses with his Search and Rescue Training while it is not our turn at a task I usually fit a brief session of his "clicker games" in while we wait for our turn.  These quick "clicker games" can be fit in anywhere, any time and the distractions of what might be going on around us help work on his distraction skills.