Problem Solving Open Mouth Target *Free*

One of the most common problems is the dog touching your hand with an open mouth. We want a closed mouth touch so it is clear that it is the nose, not the teeth or mouth that is touching the target. If you clean it up now, it will save you time later on. This becomes important for flipping switches, pushing buttons and other behaviors.

We need to look at the reason your dog is touching your hand with an open mouth.

1).   The target hand placement may affect the dog’s physical structure. A hand held high stretches the dog’s neck and that tends to open their mouth. Try bringing your hand straight down from above and keep it on enough of an angle so that only the dog’s nose tip will touch your hand. It helps if your dog is in a sit or down to limit her upward movement when you start training this.

Once your dog catches on that’s it’s only his nose that needs to touch (4 in a row correct or 8/10 correct), you can try presenting your hand lower for him to nose touch or presenting your hand on less of an angle. If he is successful, you can continue to present your hand lower. If he goes back to open-mouth, you need to do more practice with your hand coming from above.

Here I change my hand position with Jessie to show you how the mouth will open as we raise the hand target. The first one in front is closed. The second one her mouth opens. The third one she remembers to close her mouth.