Bridge and Targeting

Not wanting to highjack the clicker training thread....

Anyone tried or had sucsess with this?

I went on a course with Kayce Cover in 2004 at Wood green.

I wasn't very impressed with what was being sugested but I tried it with my dogs. Tassle was already capable of targeting both her front and back legs and her nose. She would do this on any object I directed her to.

However - I never got to the point of her understanding that it was her body part if that makes sense. She always thought it had to be something away from her body. Not sure I am explaining this very well.

I have not tried it with the others as have not really seen the point.

Would love to hear of other experiences....

lol im lost, your about as good as explaining things as I am...lol

or it could be its to early for me.

I have had a document on this from a friend for years and I just CAN'T get my head round it

No - its quite complicated.

I think the general idea is geting the dog to 'target' parts of its body (legs/nose/ears/shoulders etc) but the lady who started it (I think) maintains that the animal understands the concept of the body parts (which I don't agree with personally) so - in theory - you could tell the dog to touch its nose with its paw and it would undertand...is that a bit clearer?

That would be your end result.

The bridging bit is a noise so the animal understands to continue.

When she was demonstrating she used 'X'. So as teh dog was moving towards the hand she would say 'xxxxx' then as the dog touched the hand it there would be a slightly different tone on the X.

It was hard watching it in person - let alone trying to explain.

This might help...
http://www.caninehorizons.com/Bridge_and_Target.html
(Hope the link works)

I've heard of it but not really looked into it, as most trainers I spoke to on lists weren't sure about it so I decided not to go there, although it's an interesting concept

Helpful aren't I!!

Wys
x

lol im glad Im not the only one, I love using clickers, but I have not gone that deep into it I guess,

I have tried it a little bit with Ben and it did help him to hold a position while I added another one - in his case staying in the begging position while raising the paw to a target (he never stayed in the beg before)
Have to work on it more because it is a really interesting concept

If I rem right the canine horizon woman with the poodles (whos site I heard about this from) also had trouble getting them to target something like 'paw touch' onto another part of the dogs body (nose) so she got them to target a post it and put the post it nearer and nearer the dogs nose

How did you get them to target back paws?? I have been trying with Ben for a while (front paws took a year!! - he isnt the fastest, but once he got the concept of moving the paw he got the whole targating thing at the same time so he can touch anything - Mia can shake hands, it took 2 goes but she isnt getting targeting)

I have to admit Ben is my 1st try with clickering - let alone IB so I am making lots of mistakes - hopefully I will be better with Mia

Wys
x

Humm - back legs......

2 ways I have found...one is tactile work -some dogs love having the insides of thier back legs tickled and will go silly and loose - often they will lift the leg...mark and reward.

Second way is using a different surface under foot - often somthing with a bit of height as well (Video cases or the yellow pages ). Either getting the dog to wakl over the object or walk back on to it and again marking and rewarding when the dogs leg is lifting or touching the other object.

(Simiplified down version!)

I taught kaos to do face...aka put his paw on his nose, I taught him that by sticking a bit of tape on his nose then when he went to paw it off, I clicked...it only took a coupld of times,

but I guess thats just a very watered down version of what your talking about