I know it may not seem like an insanely cool trick, but I feel like it's definitely an accomplishment for us. She's really starting to get a little better about staying focused when we're working on new things and for that I'm happy and a bit relieved.
We still do have our off days though on occasion. Today happened to be such a day. Cricket and I were working on a new trick, "cross your paws". She started to get confused so I backed up a couple steps figuring I was just pushing her too fast. She still looked really confused and instead jumped up and began pawing at her nose and rolling over, offering me all of her most recent tricks in the hopes that I'd click for those behaviors instead. I ended up asking for a few of her older tricks (take a bow, high five) and gave her a lot of verbal praise when she did them right. Then I went back to the very first step of our "cross your paws" trick. She did it right on the very first try. I clicked and rewarded her followed by a tugging game to end our training session. A tip: Always be sure to try and end your training sessions on a positive note. You and your dog will both thank me for this, trust me.
Sometimes I can get a little too hasty in training and push my dog too fast. I get so caught up and anxious in seeing the end result that I forget that my dog may need a little time and practice to figure out what it is that I want. I know when I'm getting too pushy when my dogs start to get confused and frustrated. At that point I usually take a step back, ask for something I know they're already confident doing, reward them and then I turn it into a fun game to end the training session whether it's playing tug or throwing a ball around for a bit. I really need to work on being patient when I train. Rome wasn't built in a day. I need to stop expecting too much too soon from my dogs. When I do take the time to build up on a trick at my dog's pace, the end result in return is nothing short of fabulous.
Bamm and I are still working on his "pick it up" trick that will eventually be shaped into another trick where he stacks objects such as food bowls and orange cones. He definitely has the pick it up part down. We just need to work on building up duration so that he eventually will just hold the toy until I tell him to let go. I was trying to work on clicking for longer holds, but he kept picking up the dumbbell and dropping right away anticipating a click and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get him to hold the dumbbell for even a second longer before he'd drop it. I got a little advice that I'm going to try out and hopefully it'll work out. Once we get him holding an object and releasing it into my hand when I ask for it, then we can work on picking up other types of objects and ultimately work on stacking objects. This trick may take us a little bit of a while to master, but Bamm is really sensitive and gets frustrated really easily so I'm taking it super super slow with him.
This trick is still completely at the beginning stages. Here's a video to show where we are at now. Like I said, we're still just at the "pick it up" phase. He does hold the dumbbell for just a split second longer on the last try.
I'll be honest, I really am excited to see how this trick ultimately will end up. I do have a lot of future trick ideas that I'm tossing around in my head. I don't want to get started on any of the other big ones until we've accomplished the stacking trick, but two my ideas are training him to retrieve a beer/cola from the fridge and also a walking handstand. I'd really like to teach Cricket the walking handstand, but she's still way too young. That trick really involves complete strength building and training the muscles a certain way and it's just not a good idea to teach it to Cricket until she has finished growing completely and is at least well over a year old.
PAY ATTENTION: Tomorrow I will announce my new trick train off. I'm a part of a dog forum and we're going to be doing a trick train off. The poll closes tonight so by tomorrow I should know what the trick is and depending on the trick I'll decide which of my dogs I'm going to work on it with. We had fairly easy tricks to vote on this time around.
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