Slimy, yet satisfying |
At one point, the trainer had us practice listening skills with our dogs. We were to call out different cues at random so the dogs would have to pay attention to which action they did. They had to be cues that didn't involve a hand signal or an object, which narrowed our list to just "sit" and "down". (Perhaps this was helpful for Mushroom because she already has trouble distinguishing the two.)
Some of the tricks that the other dogs in the class did were "speak", "spin", and "sit close" (which makes me assume there is a "sit where you are" cue to go with it). I think it would be nice if our dogs picked up a new trick for this exercise, and just in general. (Well, maybe just Badger. I don't want Mushroom to be too confused.)
Mushroom slept like this through the rest of Saturday |
The question is - what trick should they learn? We've avoided teaching cues for some behaviors that we don't want, such as pawing, standing on hind legs, and barking, because we've been afraid of reinforcing them. That leaves tricks that the dogs don't do as part of their normal behaviors, such as spinning in a circle or sitting in a particular location, and we have no idea how to teach those.
Does your dog know a cool trick? How did you train them to do it?
I taught Kaya & Norman wave but that might fall into the pawing category. I taught Kaya to spin in either direction using the first half of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elKsANmYVTI
ReplyDeleteI had the intention of teaching her the whole thing which results in a heel but I never did finished. Still, she looks like a pretty cute circus do doing the first part:)
That's a great idea! The dogs still have trouble with heeling (especially Mushroom).
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