Dog Trick of the Day

8/9/12
Find it:

1.Choose an item with lots of your scent on it(like a hat or a hair tie) and show it to your dog.

2.Have someone hold your dog's collar while you hide the item somewhere obvious at first.

3.Release your dog to go find it and click and treat him/her as he/she approaches it.

4.Gradually increase the difficulty by hiding it in more challenging places.

5.Find another item to practice with and try again.

6.Label the behavior Find It as the dog moves toward the object.

7.Congratulations, you've taught your dog Find it!

Dog Trick of the Day

8/8/12
Walking the Dog:

1.Teach your dog to retrieve and carry a leash.

2.Once your dog is retrieving the leash easily, start practicing having him/her hold it with some resistance (hold on the end and give a little tug).

3.Hand your dog the leash and click and treat him/her for grabbing it and walking with you.

4.With the leash firmly in your dog's mouth, practice giving it a tug, and click and treat him/her for pulling back or hanging on.

5.Gradually increase the amount of resistance you offer to prepare him/her for a real dog on the end of the lead.

6.When she can carry the leash while you are offering resistance, go ahead and add a real dog.

7.The dog you add should be an adult with some leash manners and the leash should be attached to a flat buckle collar.

8.The dog being led should be clicked and treated for walking slightly ahead of the other dog but not outright pulling.

9.Wow, you've taught your dog how to walk the dog!!!

Dog Trick of the Day

8/7/12
Take a Bow:

1.It's probably best to start with all the dogs in the Sit/Stay position.  Reinforce each dog for holding the Stay.

2.Give the cue for Bow to all the dogs at once, or each dog individually.  Click and treat those dogs that perform the behavior correctly.

3.Continue to practice until all the dogs are performing in unison.  Don't be afraid to go back and review the steps with each dog individually if the trick starts to fall apart.

4.Fabulous, you taught your dogs Take a Bow!

Dog Trick of the Day

8/6/12
Everybody Wave:

1.Make sure each dog can fluently and reliably wave on a hand signal.

2.Line the dogs up and reinforce them for holding Stay.

3.Cue the dogs to Wave and click and treat all of them.

4.Practice with two dogs at a time until they are competing with each other to raise their paws the fastest.

5.Encourage extra-fast efforts by clicking and treating only the dog that was first.

6.Gradually add more dogs, following the same rules; the faster dogs get treated more often than the slower dogs.

7.If one dog is particularly slow, take hi aside and teach him to wave faster before putting him back into the group.

8.Yay, you taught your dogs Everybody Wave.

Table Manners

It's good to have a dog with good table manners who won't beg for food.  I usually give my dogs the scraps of my dinner after I eat, so they don't get fed at the table and start expecting that all the time.  If you feed your dogs at the table to often they will start begging and that is the exact opposite of what you want.

Dog Trick of the Day

8/5/12

Double-Dog Roll Over:

1. Have each dog lie about three feet apart (allow more space if the dogs are giant breeds).

2. Reinforce each dog for holding the Down/Stay position.

3.Cue the dogs to Roll Over one at a time(reinforce the others for staying until they have been cued) , or give the cue for all the dogs to roll at the same time.

4.Experiment with giving a cue to each dog and then giving one cue to the group and see which version of the trick looks flashier.

5.If you are cueing all the dogs at once, you need only one click for all of them, but treat each dog with him/her own cookie.

6. If you are cueing each dog separately, click and treat that dog before asking the next one to go.

7.Once the dogs are performing reliably, go ahead and verbally label the behavior Everybody Over, or label each individual rollover with the dog's name and the the Roll Over command.

8.You trained your dogs Everybody Roll Over!