Things to Teach

[JMFS]

I'm trying to think of new things to teach Gertie to do.  The most useful thing so far has been her turning on the lights for me.  Momo is 10x smarter than Gerts (he's downright brilliant where Gertie is smart), but Gertie is calm enough to train (Mo gets overly excited and we can only train for a few minutes at a time).  I shot a short video of the lights.  I placed these all over the house and she'll go to them when I say "light."  I adore how she looks at me after each success - she's so eager to please.  ♥

 

[Adrienne]

Awww, that's adorable, she looks so proud of herself!

Other fun useful things that come to mind is closing cabinet doors (with paw or nose), pushing doors left ajar open wide for you when you are carrying groceries and your hands are full or pulling your socks off (once they are partially off so the dog has something easy to grasp-avoid if dog has little  bite inhibition). 

Einstein enjoyed turning on tap lights with his paw. If that's something you would like to train too, there's a video on how to train it in the video archive.: https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/video-archive/ You'll need those little battery-operated push lights and once the behavior is fluent, you can then practice in the dark too!

 

 

 

[JMFS]

She really is proud - that's how she behaves after she does anything I ask her to.  Roll over?  She gives me Three of them, lol.  She's so adorable and good-natured.  Nothing gets her down.

Einstein's light trick is what gave me the idea to train this.  I've watched that video of him several times and it always put a smile on my face to watch that big ol' paw smack the light.  I also love how he looked at you each time after he touched it, "did I do it?!"  His focus was so solid throughout!

I'll have to try the sock idea - that sounds funny.  This girl is the polar opposite of Momo when it comes to bites.  She chews Every bite of food, even something as small as a Zuke's mini.  We're working on "take" because she's reluctant to mouth things so I think she's a perfect candidate for this idea - just have to reinforce "take." 

She's got "touch" down pat so the door thing would be easy, too.  She already opens the gate and a door is simply a bigger solid gate.  Once they learn "touch" it's kind of up to our imagination.