Training by pushing and tugging is off target.

This is an old article by Gary Wilkes.

Over the years, Bob Hope has become linked with golf. In movies and on stage, he has often held his arms around a beautiful woman and guided her arms through the motion of swinging a club. I think we can agree that teaching golf was the last thing on his mind.

Bob may know or may not know it, but pushing, tugging, or guiding someone through a behaviour is called modify modelling. It is the primary way that people teach animals. If you want to stop to sit, shut down on his rear while tugging his neck upward. If he doesn’t come, put a rope on her and rail in like a tuna.

Or you want Bruno to sit parallel with you, nudge him with your foot. While these examples are too common, they are usually quite ineffective and inefficient. All animals possess innate resistance to being pushed, shoved, or tagged.

A more flexible system of teaching utilises an animal’s instinctive ability to target and track prey. To see the system at work, toss your pet’s favourite toy across the room. Ha ha, the same dog that cannot follow you while on a leash can track the toy perfectly, so it’s suddenly skating across the kitchen floor at almost 20 mph with no help from the leash.

No, grab the toy and touch those noses as he tries to bite it. Move it back over his forehead. Keep it low enough that he does not try to jump up to get it. He will either back up or sit. Next, try a lot of luck at getting fire out to lie down. Touch the toy to his nose and move it in a straight line to his front paws. As fire Fido tries to grab the toy, move it slowly along the ground away from him. To follow the toy, he must gradually stretch until he is lying down. If he stands up instead, go back to the sitting position and try again. If he succeeds, give him lots of treats and affection.

Controlling a dog’s ability to target can go much further than just lying down or sitting. Most small dogs learn to dance by trying to target a treat over their head. Targeting is primarily a behaviour used by herding dogs, retrievers, and other working animals. Gunther Gable-Williams, a master circus trainer, uses targeting with his tigers. He uses a sticker equipped with a small nail that holds a piece of meat. When he moves the stick, his tigers follow the bit of meat and then receive a reward for the correct action.

Cats adapt readily to training that uses targeting rather than modelling. Pulling and chugging your cat will only frustrate both of you. Teaching a cat to sit, lie down, or roll over can be easily accomplished through targeting, while many trainers continue to use old methods of modelling. Targeting reflects a more natural and efficient way to teach. Besides the challenge and enjoyment of teaching without force, your pets’ behaviour will soon be right on target too.

While targeting has been used effectively by professional trainers, it is relatively recent for pet owners. The example above might be more accurately termed as baiting by some trainers, now a practice that we usually try to avoid, but generally, what you read above is well worth understanding.
From an assistance dog’s point of view, you’re going to be teaching your dog many behaviours that you need to be of very high standard in order to pass a public access test.

It would be wise if you could learn the idea of target training and using various prompts in order to get the right behaviour that you want. For example, if you are teaching the dog to walk in the heel position next to your left or right side, one way of doing this is to use floor mats in the shape of a rectangle that would be approximately the same size as your dog’s feet as they are on the ground.