Mochie Goes to School: Week 1

Today was Mochie's first day of school. I was super excited for her to go to school and learn! It sucks though that the dogs don't really get to socialize until later on in the class.

Actually, this week was Mochie's first week of school, but my 2nd week of school. Confusing? Well the first week of school was for humans only, no dogs. During the first session, we learned  how to teach the dogs the desired behaviors we wanted.

Touch
First, we learned touch. To teach touch, we hold a treat in the hand that we want the dog to touch. Then we stick our hand in front of our dog and have the dog's nose touch our hand. When the dog touches theier nose to the hand, mark, and reward. We did this a few times with the treat in our hand. Next, we phased out the treat by taking it out of our luring hand and just presenting our hand to the dog. The dog touches it hand and the other hand rewards. Then we learned how to add a verbal cue. We would first say touch, present out hand and then the dog should touch, mark and reward.

Sit
I am glad Mochie knew sit, but it was good for her to learn it in a new situation. Sit means, butt and 4 paws on the floor. To get Mochie to sit, we got her interested in the treat, and then slowly raised it above her nose to get her butt down. The moment her butt was down, we marked and rewarded her for the treat.

Stand
From sit, we lured our Mochie out into a stand. We put the treat in front of her nose and slowly pulled the treat forward. From there she should stand and then we did the same, mark and treat.

And that's what we learned.