In 2010 the Association of Professional Dog Trainers began the National Train Your Dog Month campaign. The APDT thought it was long overdue to dedicate a month to bringing awareness to the importance of socialization and training, and most of all, to inform the public that training your dog can be easy and fun! They selected January as the perfect month because so many dogs and puppies are adopted or purchased from breeders and brought home during the winter holidays. Their desire is to help these new pet parents start off the new year right with their newest family member. During train the National Train Your Dog Month, I always love to see folks out and about training their dog or new puppy. So, this month I'd like to present a cute trick to teach your dog! I first saw this trick done by a small Havanese. The dog and the human had a bond that you could clearly see and they both loved this trick! It was inspirational!

The reason I chose a trick to present to you all:

• Tricks engage your dog's mind and provide mental exercise.
• Tricks are fun and make the learning process for children (and adults!) more enjoyable.
• Tricks can make breeds with a "bad reputation" look friendlier.
• Tricks are a great way to strengthen the dog-owner bond. People are relaxed when teaching tricks and it's great fun for dog and owner.
• Tricks add variety to training.
• Tricks allow you to "show off" what you've accomplished with your dog.
• Tricks can be practiced indoors or out, regardless of the weather.
• Tricks can be used to help endear your dog to someone not traditionally a dog lover.
• Tricks increase your dog’s repertoire of behaviors. The more your dog learns, the better your dog learns and the more mentally engaged he will be.
• Tricks are more fun to teach for people "put off" by obedience training: “Bang you’re dead” is the same behavior to your dog as “down”—but you have fun with it.
• Tricks provide a way to practice your dog’s “manners.”
• Tricks are entertaining and they can make people think you and your dog are both geniuses!
• Tricks can be useful. For example, teach your dog to get your slippers or bring in the newspaper on rainy days.
• Tricks engage the entire family, particularly children.
• Tricks make you laugh!
• Tricks can be entertaining for people on therapy visits at places like hospitals.

How to teach it: Your dog will require a solid understanding of targeting.

1) Try to get the dog targeting his nose to your hand, a target stick, objects, and finally a sticky note. We will use a sticky note as a prop to get this behavior reliable then fade the prop until the dog is nose targeting your lips or your cheek.

2) We will start by moving the sticky note in a variety of places, your hand, your knee, the cabinet, etc... clicking and treating for every correct response. 3) Put the sticky note on your hand again, close to your face and getting closer to sticking it on your face. We want the dog to be confident that this is not a scary thing, but a very good thing!

4) Finally place the sticky note on your face wherever you desire the kiss to be, on your cheek or lips. Click/Treat accurate nose bumps and begin making your sticky note smaller by cutting pieces off until you can rid your face of the sticky note and the dog will target your face.

5) After this is reliable you can begin adding the cue.