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Luca in a Laundry Basket (600 KB)
Why would anyone want an eighty pound German Shepherd to curl up in a laundry basket?? Because we are planning a cross country flight, and he gets grumpy about sharing his body’s space with my feet. Therefore, I want him to learn to curl up in tight quarters.
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Moon Shows Off
Besides being fun, Moon's tricks are helpful. When we are competing in agility, Moon must wait his turn to compete in very close quarters. Doing a sequence of tricks does double duty; it keeps his mind off the other dogs and the various tricks help him to stretch and limber up in preparation for his run.
For Service Dog work, backing up, changing sides, and crawling under chairs on cue, all help when a person and service dog must maneuver in close quarters with a wheel chair or cane or crutches.
You can't beat the cute factor in waving to the crowd!
Back-up, Roll Over and Wave (732 K)
Back-up and Bow (464K)
Luca plays "Taming the Shark"
Taming the Shark is a game I invented to desensitize Luca to hands moving around his head. Alhtough never aggressive, Luca's default behavior in relation to hands had been to playfully grab at them with his mouth. Playing "Taming the Shark" gives Luca a variety of acceptable ways to interact with hands that are each incompatible with "sharking" at the hand with his mouth.
Taming The Shark (1.05MB)
"Hand Mugging" (208 K)
Hand Mugging teaches:
Self-control
Gentleness when taking treats
Helps form a foundation for a dog learning to leave food or prized objects alone, on cue.
Introduction to Targeting (916K)
Louise, a four-month old Rottweiler puppy has her first lesson in targeting. The lesson began with a quick game of hand mugging to charge up her interest in the clicker and quickly progressed to targeting a flat hand. Once she began targeting the flat palm of my hand predictably, I began holding a telescoping target against my palm. When she began to notice and touch the target stick, I extended the stick beyond my palm. By end of this one training session, this remarkable puppy was seeking out an touching the extended tip of the target stick!
An hour long movie about targeting is available for purchase in the webstore. The movies shows two puppies learning the basics of targeting and several older dogs demonstrating some of the more advanced applications for targeting.
Dee Demonstrates how to shape dogs to back away from the hand holding a treat and then to take the treat politely from a flat upward facing palm.
Photo clip with arrows indicating dog's body parts involved in communication behaviors
Photo clip with arrows indicating dog's body parts involved in communication behaviors