This is lesson 3 with Molly the Morepork. In this lesson we are going to be talking about target training your animals.
This Target training lesson is part of the first video series ever produced by the animal training academy. It is being digitally remastered for the Academy’s first year anniversary. Read on to learn a little bit more about the content for this lesson.
Target training has a large range of different and highly beneficial uses. One of the most common uses is to train your animal to touch its nose to a target stick. You can see an example of this demonstrated in the video for this lesson with T-lo the cat. Having an animal target trained to a stick like this allows you to easily be able to communicate to your animal that you want it to move from location A to location B.
Of course you don’t have to target a nose and you don’t have to use a target stick. For example, it’s common practice in zoos when working with dangerous animals like tigers to get them to target their bums against the mesh of their exhibits. This allows a carer to use positive reinforcement to train acceptance of injections into that area.
In this video you can see how I use my finger to get Molly to bring her entire body over to wherever I am. This is target training as well. I am targeting Molly to my tapping finger. Frequently you might find that your animals are target trained and you don’t even know it. For example if you do training with your animal and always feed it out of your hand. You might find that if you close your hand into a fist your animal will follow it around. This means that your animal is targeting to your hand.
Enjoy this lessons video content below and good luck with all your training endeavors.