*Probably should have mentioned as it has been said again and again in class...

Say the command once and only once. Because if you get into
Rio sit, sit Rio, sit, now come on sit ~ our instructor has said they will pick up on having to be told multiple times before doing the action.

I know when I taught sit ~ I said it a few too many times so I really have to police myself in just requesting the action once and treating at accomplishment.

I taught look by showing her a treat and moving it to my nose and saying "look". I treated the instant she looked at me. Then, I just put the treat at my nose and said "Ruby, look" and she did it. Now I say look and she does and runs to me (even with no treat). So, look works like look and come. Like a buy one get one free trick! haha!

Now one of the others (they did not go to school) also looks at me when I say look. Soon I will have all of them doing it well, I hope. I do add their name to the command since I am training 3.

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photos-Jennifer Hague, fixyourimages.com

Just a suggestion - If you youtube "kikopup" lots of videos will pop up on dog training. I love her methods and she doesnt use any harsh methods. I am currently using her technique for teaching "leave it" with my new pup and its working great, its even working outside.

This isnt to anyone in particular, just thought i should share whats working for me.

Will definitely look her up I enjoy a fellow named tab289 (his enunciation bothered me originally, but I adjusted) but I think he is fabulous. Will look for kikopup tonight ~ thanks for mentioning her.

My, pleasure

I've never heard of Tab289 but i will check him out for sure. Thanks for mentioning him as i'm always open to seeing different training styles and methods. I hope he isnt very hard to understand, i have a bad time with heavy accents and the like.

We have training confused. Lulu says, "Yip." I do what she wants.

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"A dog wags its tail with its heart." Martin Buxbaum

Instead of luring, you can do what's called "catching a behavior."

Put a treat on the ground, letting the dog see it first, and then cover it with your hand. The dog should be eager to get to the treat and might paw at your hand, lick it, nibble at it, bark, etc. (If you're not getting ANY of these behaviors, then you're either using food to teach a play-motivated dog OR your treats aren't good enough.)

The idea is to sit and wait until the dog offers you the correct behavior, or at least makes a move in the right direction. At first you might get a "bow" instead of a "down," but you should reward the effort of putting the head and elbows on the ground. If it's not quite a "down" to start, raise criteria rapidly-- maybe a "bow" is good enough the first time so she gets a treat, but the next time you need to see more.

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Thanks to Jan for my siggy!

We made the "breakthrough" last night with "down" Her best friend KnK was spayed yesterday so being she didn't have her playmate and all that energy she pal-ed around with me and we got it. Shouldn't say we "have it" ~ but she can do it and we'll continue working on getting it so its like a comfy shoe It's like she has a neck like a giraffe for this one maneuvering the treat took some some definite finesse. And there isn't a shot of her doing it without a treat yet, but I hope by Monday Night's class she be pretty solid with it. I by no means need her to be Valedictorian, but I don't want her to be the reason class is stalled because she isn't up to speed with the others. So far though she is holding her own. It's fun regardless.

And Kikopup ~ I saw a video of hers before and didn't know that's who you meant and didn't know she had a channel. I really like her so thanks for throwing that out there Astrogirl.