This past weekend, Andy and I took Dexter up to Wooster. We were going to night #1 of the Al van Wie Basketball tournament with my dad and grandpa, and the next day we were taking Dex to a CERF clinic in Tallmadge, OH (1 hr from Wooster but 2 hrs from our home). On Friday night, after we went up to bed and took Dex with us, I decided to teach him a trick with some of his kibble as treats. He has never learned roll over, so we went for that one. WOW did he learn it quickly!! He wasn't very happy with me "helping" him roll by putting my hand on his shoulder and applying pressure, so I just had to lure him with the treat... he turned his head and looked over his shoulder and then flipped his head the other way a few times, then all of a sudden he rolled! So HUGE jackpot and praise (I didn't have a clicker so we were working on verbal/physical praise and treats only). He seemed to realize that's what we wanted, and with the lure continued to roll pretty much every time after that! We left it there, but I was so proud of my little buddy.
Yesterday afternoon, I took Dex to work on his wobble board (much improved) and on roll over with fading the lure. He was really gettng it. I think it's going to be hard to move from me sitting next to him to standing up, but he is really getting it. I also taught him to "wave". His "shake"s were pretty low down so I had to shape him to lift the paw higher, but it was so easy. He is SUCH a smart little boy, and really lights up with trick work. I need to do it more often obviously! He truly had such a good time and I could really tell he was loving figuring things out. He's so funny too when he does things, he does them very deliberately. For example when Panic shakes or waves, her paw is frantic all over the place - doing the right thing but she is so FRANTIC while she does it and desperate to get her reward. Dex is more like "ok, I need to put my paw on your hand - lift the paw, move towards hand, annnnd done". It's cute. He's not slow - still very quick response, just a totally different approach than panic.
I also worked with Spry, first on 2o2o on a board on teh ground (the board is too slippery, need to apply some texture!) and also on teaching her to shake. She mostly wanted to lick my hand but once lifted a paw a little bit so "click" and jackpot... and she got it pretty quickly after that.
I was actually very proud of Panic last night too. I worked on spider dog, and weaving between my legs. I can't remember the last time I worked on tricks with her that I didn't get very frustrated. She is, as I mentioned above, kind of frantic about these things. She has become too crazy and not really trying to think about what she's doing or figure it out. And ends up a) diving for her reward too hard and scraping my knuckles with her teeth which KILLS, b) barking VERY loudly and incessantly, or c) just going through her repetoire of existing tricks instead of trying new things. BUT last night, she was awesome and thought about things, and NO barking :) She did start to get frustrated at one point and rolled over a few times (which is her least favorite trick, so when she tries that I know she's at the end of her string) but I got her back on track.
Tricks are fun!
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