Tricks

Learning new tricks

Learning new tricks gets the dog thinking and that is one of the best ways to activate your dog. I train by shaping whenever I can, because then Miki really needs to think what is it that I’m after this time.

Here are two links, from where you can learn how to teach various tricks to your dog:

Miki is highly sensitive and he’s also very sensitive to all kind of sounds including speech. When Miki was younger I taught only verbal clues to him and I noticed that he got anxious every time we started training. Then I realized that Miki got anxious because I was trying to teach him verbally and for that reason he needed a LOT (sometimes even weeks) of training with every new trick - and sometimes he didn’t even learn anything at all because of his anxiety. When I started to teach Miki using only my body language Miki wasn’t so anxious (he was actually relatively calm) and he learned new tricks within 1 to 3 short sessions :)

Miki knows over 70 cues and tricks and he is currently learning some new ones as well.

Miki is a master in understanding human language, so who knows how many cues and words he really knows. Last time we visited our vet clinic, Miki was treated by a new vet. After about five minutes she pointed out that Miki understands verbal language a bit too well. True.

We are literally almost out of words and expressions as we try not to say the words Miki understands in certain situations. It’s quite amazing, how much he can understand, but not when we are visiting the vet.