Enough vacations, time for new tricks!
1. heeling: make the "glued to the leg" exercise more like heeling: still do different kind of turns, but also some normal forward walking in different speeds (slow, normal, fast) to teach them to adjust and keep the right position in every situation
2. figure 8 backward: tell the dog to go into heel position and start spinning as we were doing on the target, then very suddenly stop and step back with the other leg (if the dog is at left side - with right leg), you can also make a gesture with left hand to try to get them to keep circling below the heeling position, eventually all the way around you leg, so that they come backwards between your legs back into front position. If the dog insists on staying in heel position, you can help with the hand a little bit, lure his head out (left for 90 degrees if the dog is on left side) and say back to have them back up in your direction. Step back with the other leg enough to have them back up between your legs. Reward and tell them to heel on the other side (right) and repeat the process. As soon as you get some smoothness with that, stop rewarding for coming in between, always first tell them to come to the other leg and reward at your side in order to avoid having them back up too far - they need to stay very close to your legs all the time.
3. skateboarding: try to find a skateboard (kids department) and reward for making it move with front feet. Don't reward 4on, but 2 or 3, the criteria is they make a skateboard move.
4. cik&cap: find a table leg, dog-food container, traffic cone or similar and shape the dog to go around it - first just a step, then two or three circles, both directions (you can reward both right from the start if you are getting it - if not, start with just one, but then on one session, don't reward that direction anymore but wait for the other)
5. fade the object for side legs: if the dog is already heaving both legs up at the same time, click&reward that before he even touches the object, so that he understands the idea is picking them up, not touching something. At the same time, try changing objects as much as possible. Going to vertical objects shouldn't be too difficult, then go to "empty" objects like a chair that looks like an object, but doesn't really offer much support, so at this point, the dog is already free-standing, the object is just there for mental support. Next step in table leg and then you don't need an object anymore. For free handstand, you go through the same process, only that it takes longer as it's physically more demanding - you can start working on it, but do not rush it, especially not with young puppies!
6. don't forget on recalls and playing, stays with distractions (you can combine it all in a really fun game), try the hug on a plastic bottle or something similar that is light enough for the dog to hold it and have them hold it independently, add more steps to backing up from you, tape the 4in the bowl trick again so that I can see to what size you managed to get: the smaller the better! And if you need some more ideas, you can also try balancing ON the object (4on vs. 4in) 🙂
And most importantly: have fun!
Have fun!
Our handstand progression:
Skateboarding: (She loves it! :-D)
Here is a video of drumming. (Our second session.. on the first session she was just circling and scratching, so I stopped the first session and thought about what I was doing wrong….
I think I’ve found the answer myself: I think I have to click befóre she is going to circling and I have to click immediately when she is going to lift her front legs.
I know it’s not a trick from the puppy class, but I found this trick just too funny, I wanted to try. 😀 (I hope it’s ok I posted it here)
We are far from there yet, but are we starting it right and it the correct height of the bucket?
We are also behind with some tricks, but practicing every day.
Sometimes a rest day in between, then I hide the dogfood around the house or give them a kong, they rarely get their food without doing anything for it, I am realy curious how you all do this
(and of course you Silvia) Are we practicing to much when we do it (almost) every day?
Tonight I will tape and post some cik and cap around our tablelegs because now I have to make some money for the next (agility foundation) class! 😉
Oops I see this is our video of this morning (so not the second but our 3th session). I couldn’t find it (between the many video’s) so I thought then I post session 2 but now I see I DID post session 3 😀
Very cool! Time you start running next to the skate-board so that she can go faster and maybe pushes with one leg -- she offered that once in your video already, so I’m sure she will be a great skateboarder! Drumming is going well too, great progress in just that one session you sent! And yes, your reasoning is correct: you actually want to click for lifting her front legs up (higher&higher) -- landing on a bucket is just a consequence of that part. And yes, your bucket is o.k.
If you keep it fun and the dogs are enjoying it, it’s perfectly o.k. to do tricks every day, of course! With my puppies, I even make 4 short sessions a day, then I do less, but longer ones -- every day one if I have time and ideas what else to train. If I don’t have any new idea, I don’t find it that interesting and then I will only do some old tricks with adult dogs for balance and strength as a conditioning exercise -- twice a week or something. But with puppies, I also do tricks almost every day.
Valori, also from here… so sorry to hear about your 4 year old dog! Far too young. Hugs from Holland
Hey Teach, my dog ate my homework! I am late and behind again, I’m a rotten, lazy dog trainer 🙂
So, this is what we got so far.
Skateboarding
figure 8 backwards
progression from hug the pole to holding a toy
Well, that’s actually very good for a dog afraid of a skate-board! He looks pretty comfortable with it now, even when it goes up in the air and then bangs to the floor! Figure 8 is going well too, definitely good enough to start helping less: don’t step over him anymore, but let him do more of a job on his own. It’s of course harder for bigger dogs, but I think he can do it, he sure has good rear end awareness by now! For holding the toy, I would hold it lower and first get a nice hold with one paw in a sit position. Sit up as such is already pretty difficult for such a big dog, so I think it’s better you first work on just the independent hold with one paw, it transfers really nicely then to two paws hug when in sit up position -- it’s just easier to focus on one thing at the time 🙂 Happy training! Two more weeks to catch up! 🙂
Wow, you are still up?! Go to bed, Silvia! 🙂
Thank you for your instructions; when I watch the video, I can see I am holding the toy too high. I often think that some of the tricks/excercises are more difficult for bigger dogs. My old dog had terrible arthritis and I am always careful not to do anything that will put too much stress on joints. I only do jumping exercises once or twice a week.
I am looking forward to Agility Foundations Class!
Nah, I never go to bed before midnight and if possible never get up before 10 🙂
And yes, many tricks are easier for smaller dogs as for the big ones. But it’s actually especially with big dogs that rear end awareness, balance and strength are so important as they’re also more prone to problems with joints. I think some jumping is good for them, but you definitely don’t want to do too much of it!
The beginning of Cik & Cap:
(Is it ok to give the direction with the hand? left-turn, right-turn)
Cool! Nice and tight and good placement of the reward! That’s definitely good enough to put a name on it, but yes, you can signal with your hand which direction is which.
Grace & I were playing around in the loungeroom with our ‘3-on-1-off’ on the skateboard. She did one very cool move …
I was rewarding for 3 on or when she banged it down hard or anything else that looked interesting …
Very cool! By the way, can I use your hug the puppy video on my website? -- To pass the idea to others in case they want to take the trick further? It’s just so cute!
Thanks Silvia. Yes, I’d love you to use my hug the puppy video. That would be very cool 🙂 Did you end up trying it with your dogs? Glee has found a great home so Grace has only 4 more days to hug her
I just got a call asking if Grace & I would like to be in a documentary for channel 9. Filmed at the hospital with her doing her therapy work. I’m sure the hug trick will feature bc she loves doing it with her ‘work collegue’. V exciting!
I was procrastinating from study today and looking up if Grace & I could travel to Europe together. Australia has very strick quarantine rules so i am very jealous of you guys over there that can travel freely. Very very jealous 🙂 She would love to come to one of your camps and have an adventure! Dogs used to have to stay in quarantine for 6 months after overseas travel but now it is 30 days. I’m not sure i could do that to her -we would have to go on a very very long trip to make it worth it …
After a day oh hugging sessions, this it what Shape ended up doing….
oh well… you can see it better here:
oh--how cute!!
🙂 Too cute!
She did it all by herself, I did’t ask her to. Maybe she liked Camilla’s idea very much!
That is awesome, Laura!! Thanks for making me smile 🙂 Shape looks pretty happy with herself!
Thank you for the idea! 🙂 She’s so happy to work and always doing funny things!
Wow, I’m sure Grace will be the star! Very cool! Very happy to hear Grace is going to a great home too!
Yeah, it’s very easy to travel with dogs within Europe. I hope you can once make the travel, hopefully they stop with the quarantine as UK did -- it would still be far, but way easier! Do you know if anything is going in that direction?
And, oh, no, I still didn’t get to the hugging… Too busy with all the long-distance classes and agility training, we’re starting with WC qualifications now and I’m running with 3 dogs this year (and the fourth one is getting ready for competitions!), so we did quite some agility and conditioning lately. Hard to do it all!
Hi Silvia and everyone.
Here is another videos of lesson 5.
Sorry about skateboarding footage is old!! I realized my doggy skateboard wheel was broken.. so I fixed with tape but it didn’t roll well.. and I didn’t have time to find new one and empty car park.. but he still remember to push.
At the moment, Niah thinks every object I offer is que for side legs up.
(I changed object many times for this tricks) so I needed to lure a bit to let him understand cik&cap. when I played at living room with turn, I was saying cik&cap but I haven’t really added clear name for him yet. I will keep practice with spin around object then name it soon bc, he still gets confused with side legs up.
Heeling has been good and he loves glued into my legs, speeding up and down make him excited too.
At the moment, we can backward heel with good position for 2 steps.
his body used to curled into my body after 2 steps.
then I step on his foot once by accident..
since then, he started curled outward now.. so every time we do backward heel, his body go away after 2 steps.
it has been challenging to change his negative experience to positive again.
It’s too funny how many dogs are now offering side legs on everything! For the hug, you still need the legs go deeper around… -- maybe hold the toy closer to his chest? Cik&cap is going well and I hope he gets over that stepping on accident soon! He seems to be very sensitive about things like that… Bu has this tendency too, so whenever something potentially scary happens, I immediately start a party, doing her favorite tricks, playing etc., trying to not give her the time to stress over whatever just happened. Then I avoid doing it for a couple of weeks and it works great, she seems to get over it by then. At first, I tried to work through it, but that seemed to just rehearse the fear in her head -- the harder I worked on it, more time she had to keep thinking about how scary that event was and it took months to get over it. Then I changed the tactic and it works GREAT with her. She likes to over-think things, so not giving her time to think about it definitely helped the most with her.
Thank you for your advice Silvia.
Both of my BCs are sensitive!
Niah is much brave and better but my another BC is even more delicate and sensitive.
She normally stop playing as soon as anything scared her.
I will try to be even more fun and go crazy to have a big party when they show me scared sigh 🙂
Since I read your comment, I stop heeling for awhile and it has been 5 days. Today, he was not scared of backing up right next to me tightly! hope it was good break for him. Thank you!
That’s good to hear! The best is to start the party even before they show fear, immediately after something potentially scary happens, so that they don’t have time to process it 🙂 It got so automatic for me that once when I fell really badly, crashing into a very heavy wing, I started a party right from the floor, forgetting nothing scary actually happened to the dog, but to me 🙂 Everybody was very surprised to my happy and excited reaction to a really bad fall 🙂
We have some progress in side legs trick. Heeling on left side is rather good. On right side he attemps to back round me (we haven’t train right side very much). Video includes also a seesaw special.
Side legs are going great now!!! And wow, the heeling is GREAT! On the right side, he is backing up behind you even if you’re walking? Very cute see-saw special too 🙂 How high is he now, he still looks medium, no?
He tempts to circulte me when I ask him to come to the rigt side. I start he figure 8 backwards on right side, so that’s porbably the reason. He is not backing up when walking but he is slower and not so tight on right side. Sometimes he also stays too much behind.
He is higher than Bode and Lili but I haven’t measured him. If he doesn’t grow like 5 cm any more he will be measured to compete in medium. There are bigger dogs too 🙂
Is that a joke or is it really how it’s done in Finland??? That would explain why Finish, UK etc. “medium” team looks like it does, but I just think it’s very unfair to real medium dogs. What, should I move mine in small and compete against the Papillons? Doesn’t sound right, right?
Yes, In Finland some judges have their own measuring system. And yes, it is unfair. Do you remember the young kelpie on your last seminar in Finland? Jouni measured that she is 43-46 cm and the judge measured her to be clear medium dog. Of course it is better for the dog but unfair for the real medium dogs.
Ok. I am soooo behind, that I don’t know where to put the video now, but here it goes.
I was a bit unmotivated because the circling work wasn’t improving. Sometimes we got better, but then the next session was horrible again. Now it seems like we have seen the light! ;)) Csilla still “jumps” the circle when she needs to turn her head around, but well… After that circling session on this video, the next was much better (but not on tape). And on the next one, in one session, we made the target lower. Now it is a hard ‘frisbee’. And.. I know it can be a lot better, but for me… this is heaven heelwork for now ;). Now I am focussing on her not squishing herself to make the circle even when I am in the way. (like the last try).
With sitting up, the hardest part is to let her sit untill I say ‘touch’. And ofcourse it is the same with hugging the umbrella.
Slamming is ok, but after a big slam the next one is much softer mostly. So we’ll keep doing this every now and then.
2on2off is a little stuck. She can’t seem to think about the position when I am not in front of her. Is it oke to change my position now when she is in her 20n2off position, to get her to get used to me being somewhere else? Or is it better to do something else?
Hugs! Sandy (way to late, but back on track)
Very nice to see Csilla again!!! She is still as funny as always 🙂
And circling is sure great and completely independent now! Great job! She now needs to switch to your leg as a new target, then she won’t be trying to pass you anymore 🙂 I see the problem with paw touches in sit position 🙂 The umbrella trick, you can also do it with just one leg first and let her choose her position -- I usually don’t put them in any specific position and just shape the hug with one leg and then it’s easy to tell them to sit up and get a hug with both legs. You sure got some GREAT slams!!! But yeah, she doesn’t seem completely comfortable with the sound yet, that’s why she then tries to be more gentle -- smart dog!
How is that you’re doing 2on2off on a plank? Aren’t you doing running contacts? For now, change your position after she is in the position yes -- try going ahead, dropping a toy and releasing her to a toy then, so that she is not rewarded directly from you anymore, but by a toy on the floor. Once she understands well she can only get it on a release command, try leaving it on the floor when she is going into the position and then releasing to a toy -- once she starts focusing on a toy, in expectation of a release to a toy, it will be easier to vary your position and stay behind. Eventually, you’re leaving a toy after a jump, then after two jumps etc., so that eventually, she is focusing on a jump ahead of her when going in the position -- you definitely don’t want her to focus on you as, as you can see, she can’t focus on a position then. You can use food in a bowl the same way if she would prefer that over a stationary toy.
Okidoki. Thanks for your input, we’ll work on that :)!
And yes, we were doing running contacts, but we have done so many things wrong. She can have the most beautiful rc’s, but also crazy stupid jumping ones. (if you want, check rel="nofollow ugc"> . She got the contacts, but it’s not running…). Training has been going up and down and it gets a bit frustrated. So for now I am trying to train 2on2off in our backyard for now, and maybe transfer them to the dogwalk later.
Back to another trainingsession! :))
heyyyyy. this movie was intended to be only text, not a link or movie.. sorry about that!
Cool! That was a really nice run! 🙂 Good luck with 2on2ff then, just remember to be extra consistent about the criteria with this type of a dog!
Skateboarding--3rd session. Too much hill and he’s a little scared compared to when we go to a flat place.
Nancy and Nero
Yeap, he is somewhat careful, but doesn’t look scared to me! In few more sessions, he will make a great skate-boarder!
Sylvia, we have some questions…
1) Is it ok to start working on the figure 8 even though “heal” and “side” are not solid yet????
She’s good with moving around to my leg with me at a standstill
and moving next to me around in a circle,
even also when I am trying to make weirder shaped circles,
but she’s not moving forward and back yet with me--that is still confusing for her. SO, Will it confuse her more to start the figure 8?
2) With the stuffed animal “hug” she is now putting both legs around it, and sort of pulling to her, but really she is PUSHING down… the stuffy is suspended for a second kind of by accident and then she pushes it to the floor…
3) Balancing on a soccer ball? No. She only wants to play soccer and she only tries to pull it from between my feet… Once she perched on it, but the drive to play her favorite game is stronger. I have a “peanut” that she will roll forward, but I suspect the soccer ball will build up more rear end awareness because it requires her to keep her balance in all directions
4) The sitting up “say please” position to “tippy toe” standing on her back legs we already do for warm ups… but she keeps wanting to go back into the sit again before she goes back into “say please”. I watched someone else’s video where they let the dog rest their front legs on their arms on the way down, but that just makes her back-up… any suggestions?
5) What did you name the two side legs up at the same time trick? Whats your cue?
sorry no time to video everything
Hm, yes, it’s probably better to wait she gets steps forward too first, before starting with figure 8 backwards, as she might otherwise circle behind your back when you step forward… Just make those steps less and less like a circle and more a step forward -- maybe you can tape it and send, I might be able to advise better then. For a hug, I would first teach it with one leg first, in sit position and only when it’s really firm and independent, go to a hug in sit up -- the transfer is usually very easy, if the dog has goo balance in sit up already, of course. And yes, the ball can be too exciting for some dogs! 🙂 Rolling the peanut is great too, maybe if you put it on verbal, you could then transfer it to the ball too? You can try to avoid stepping backwards by trying stand up to sit up in a corner, so that she can’t back up. Watch her knees closely and click and reward any bending -- once you have that, it’s easy to progress to real sit. Another trick is to start from sit up and then lure the dog up a little bit, but not to complete stand up, meaning that as soon as they are going up just a little tiny bit, before their legs are straight, you immediately tell them to sit up again. You then slowly let them get up more&more before telling them to sit down again, but it usually goes pretty fast, the hardest part is catching the right moment and be faster with telling them to sit down as they are with standing up 🙂 The cavaletti, you can work it that way too, despite you would of course need bigger boxes with with bigger gaps in between for her to be able to fit each leg in each spacing.