Body Handling Exercises
Check your dog’s mouth and teeth a couple of times a week. You’re looking for plaque buildup or lodged foreign bodies. It’s important to teach dog body handling exercises early on so follow these quick tips on teaching your dog to say “ah”!
Using a clicker and yummy treats, remember to click and treat as you’re touching, lifting or opening. Practice for 1-2 minutes with breaks in between. Usually, steps 1-9 take 2 or 3 short sessions to teach. If at anytime, your dog refuses to open his mouth, go back to steps 1-5 for several training sessions.
- Using your index finger, touch the side of your dog’s muzzle. Keep clicker away from your dog’s ear. If that’s not possible, use a verbal marker “yes” instead.
- Lift the corner of your dog’s lip.
- Lift the other corner of his lip.
- Place your index finger in his mouth.
- Pull back his lips for a second.
- Place one hand across his muzzle (keeping your fingers away from his eyes and not applying any pressure).
- Place hand under his muzzle.
- Using both hands, open front of dog’s mouth. Click or say “yes” as you’re opening his mouth. Keep it short. Open, click, let go of mouth and treat.
- Open mouth for half a second.
- Extend duration (time) of mouth. Open slowly in small steps until your dog is comfortable for 2-3 seconds.
- Add a cue: Before moving your hands to open his mouth, say “Mouth.” Then, proceed to open and take a peek inside!
Mouth Work Means Less “Mouthing” for Puppies Too
Mouth work (touching and massaging gums and muscles of the mouth) works wonders for mouthing or nipping puppies too! Plus, give it a go for easily excited adolescent dogs (ranging between 6-18 months old). You’ll be shocked at the calming results.
How does it work? Using T Touch (Tellington Touch Training), you’re teaching body awareness using calming touch work, which promotes relaxation. Puppies and adolescent dogs have a tough time calming themselves so any opportunity to teach self soothing is highly beneficial.
Points to remember:
- Move slowly. Each tiny circle should take half a second to complete.
- Use light pressure just enough to lightly move skin around. T Touch is different than massage. You’re not kneading muscles. You’re promoting relaxation and body awareness.
- Teething puppies’ mouths are sore between 4-6 months. Instead try using T Touch around his neck and shoulders. Once all teeth have erupted, begin mouth work again.
Tellington TTouch Mouthwork for Dogs
Here’s a great video demonstrating T Touch for mouth work. Notice how slow and soft her hands move around the dog’s mouth?
Have you taught mouth work yet? If so, how did it go?
Isn’t molding (physically manipulating dog’s body) one of the more inefficient/ineffective ways to attempt to teach a dog any skill? Wouldn’t it be more effective to teach by capturing & shaping? I was hoping to find creative methods to get the behavior started, capture it & then shape & reinforce it.
Absolutely! Shaping and capturing are fabulous when teaching behaviors, and I’ll admit, I lure too. Modeling means physically forcing dogs into a position, is really holds back the learning process. Sorry if this article gave you the impression of modeling mouth handling.
For this article, I focused on teaching dogs positive associations for mouth handling (hands on mouth) while looking (examining) in their mouth. If a dog refuses to allow any touching of his mouth, we click “hand next to muzzle (not touching)”, and always work within a dog’s threshold (moving at the dog’s pace). I would never reach in and open a dog’s mouth without clicking and treating hands near mouth, touching, touching lips, pulling lips back, opening, etc. Mouth handling happens, especially at the vet’s office or if a dog has something stuff in his teeth. 🙂
Now, you can totally teach “ah” by shaping or capturing open mouths, and then clicking for larger mouth openings, then add a cue such as “say ah”. If you want to touch or look in their open mouth, you’ll need to add that to the behavior too. Hope this answers your questions!