Coco Poodle has an announcement for you!
He now has to be greeted with a touch of the cap and a bend of the knee. . . .
He has become TDCh Coco NTD ITD ATD ETD!
That’s to say he’s qualified as a Trick Dog Champion! The other alphabet (for he nearly has as many letters after his name as I do!) are Novice Trick Dog, Intermediate Trick Dog, Advanced Trick Dog, Expert Trick Dog.
I’m proud of my little poodle! He has always been a challenge with his hair-trigger responses and his reactivity, but those are part of who he is, and a contributing factor to how he learned so many tricks so fast.
He had to perform over 50 tricks to satisfy the examiners. Some of them we’ve been doing for years, and some were learnt specially for the occasion.
Here are a couple of old favourites: Sit Pretty and Take a Bow
Tricks are FUN!
I firmly believe everyone should teach their dog some tricks. That’s why they’re included in my Brilliant Family Dog Academy.
And remember, it’s all “tricks” to them! Sit is a trick, Wait is a trick, Stand still to have your harness put on is a trick, Picking up my dropped glove is a trick - but how useful!
So teaching a few tricks can contribute greatly to the harmony of your life with your dog. And you’ll certainly impress the socks off your visitors when you can mount a little performance of your tricks routine - always ending with Take a bow, of course!
People who see you having to managing your reactive dog on walks, will be delighted if your dog can give you a Sit Pretty, or a Paw Wave as you move off. You’ll become the star attraction of the neighbourhood, rather than its scourge!
And working in the non-pressured environment of teaching a trick - as long as you are endlessly patient - can do wonders for your own relationship with your dog. The trick can always be adapted to what you want: there’s no hard-and-fast rule of what a trick is. If it’s just for your pleasure, rather than competition, you do your thing!
And just look at the level of attention and anticipation you can get when you’re working with your dog. The whole enterprise should be such fun that your dog is a keen and willing learner!
Some tricks will suit your dog more than others. If your dog hates going on his back, then skip Roll over. If he’s always up on his back legs, then Dance and Up High are good options. A strong and fit young dog can even do “Press-ups” by going from Sit to Sit Pretty to Up High (stand tall) and back.
Some tricks can be “captured” - that is to say, you catch your dog doing a cute thing and put a vocal cue on it so it becomes a trick he can perform. Others you’ll need to build up slowly, stage by stage, till you get the completed sequence. Like Stacking beakers in the video below. First you teach your dog to pick things up, then to drop them, then where to drop them … and so on. Again, a useful trick, as either Lacy or Coco will stack the four bowls for me after they’ve all had dinner.
Start ‘em young!
You can start teaching your puppy as soon as he comes through the door. It doesn’t matter what you teach, as long as you teach something. They’re like sponges for learning in these early weeks, and you want to make the connections in their brain that enable them to carry on learning all their lives.
Here’s Coco learning Paws up at 9 weeks. It happens to be a very useful trick, especially for a small dog. When I pick up Coco’s harness, he puts his paws up on my leg so I can fit it on without having to bend down and get it tangled up in his legs.
Here’s a video to show you some of the tricks Coco did to earn his title. You can see here how “they also serve who only stand and wait”!
Tell me - is learning how to teach your dog tricks something you’d like to do? Comment below, or email me direct here.
