Teaching Shyla a New Trick

I am taking a day off from telling you about our desert trip to participate in the Positive Training Blog Hop. For this month's Positive Training Blog Hop, we were challenged to teach our dogs a new trick in 10 minutes. I thought that sounded like a fun challenge.

Last Friday, I took out my clicker and treats, and Shyla bounced around me in excitement that we were going to train! I'd decided to try to teach her to cross her front paws as our 10 minute trick.

I planned to teach her to cross her paws by clicking and rewarding her every time she touched my hand with her right paw. She was lying down in front of me as we did this, and my plan was to gradually move my hand so that she had to cross her right paw over her left paw to touch it.

The first several times I showed her my hand, palm up, she pounced on it, touching it with her nose and both paws. I rewarded her for that crazy behavior because she was targeting my hand which was the first step in learning the trick.

After a minute or so, I started only clicking/rewarding her when she touched my hand with her right paw and nothing else. In a couple of minutes she understood this step. We were about 5 minutes into our 10 minute challenge at that point.

Then, when I started gradually positioning my hand so that she had to reach her right paw across her left paw to touch it, she regressed - and got so excited that she was pouncing on my hand with her nose and both paws again. I just waited her out, giving no clicks/rewards until she calmed down enough to touch my hand with just her right paw.

To be honest, we were at the 10 minute mark then. But, I felt that we were so close that I kept going a bit over the time limit. At about the 13 minute mark, she fully crossed her paws to touch my hand, although she held the position only briefly.

Then, by the 15 minute mark, I would tell her to "stay" when her paws became crossed, and I'd slide my hand out from under her paw. And she held that position!!!!!!

During our training, I used almost no words, except the "stay" cue after she'd crossed her paws. Now, I'm starting to add a verbal cue for crossing her paws, which is simply "cross".

And, we're practicing crossing her paws in all sorts of places. Since we're outdoors girls, those places are outside in our forest.

You might think that I'm exaggerating how fast I can teach Shyla something with a clicker and treats. It wasn't always fast. We've been clicker training since I first met Shyla 2.5 years ago so she's become an expert on how to pick out what behavior I'm looking for. It's my job to click at the exact instant when she does the right thing, and it's her job to figure out what that "right thing" was. With practice, dogs become very good at discerning what you want them to do.

This was one of the first tricks I taught her with a clicker - resting her chin on the ground. And, it's one of her very favorite tricks.

So, it's not surprising that she decided to add her own flourish to "cross your paws"...

Yup, she decided to rest her chin on her crossed paws. I congratulated her on her creativity and rewarded her for it. That's a side effect of positive training - a dog has the confidence to make up her own tricks!

After all that thinking, she's now snoozing in the last shaft of afternoon sunlight on our deck. I wonder if she knows how many Labs before her have laid in exactly that same position to enjoy the last warm sun of the day.

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