Tag Archives: dog tricks

What dog tricks does your pet know?

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We’ve never met a dog who didn’t know at least a couple of dog tricks. “Shake” is the one we’ve seen most often from our four-legged customers, but almost every dog has a little repertoire of behaviors they know and love to show off.

Granted, most dogs know we’re incredibly soft touches and they’ll be getting rewarded mightily for their performances – but that doesn’t lessen the joy they have doing them, or the joy we get seeing them!

Speaking of joy

And that’s what playing training games with our dogs gives us – joy every single day. Most days we only play for a few minutes before work, so that we can start our day with a smile.

Tango, a Brussels Griffon, tapping a drum in his dog trick
Tango (Fran’s Brussels Griffon) is learning to play his drums!

And we’re not talking about the competition training stuff we do. We know that’s not everybody’s cup of tea. We know we’re weird and we’re okay with that. 

But everybody loves teaching their dogs tricks. And everybody’s dog loves learning them! Even if you have absolutely no experience in any kind of dog training, you and your dog probably figured it out together. And it works. 

Get a Trick Title! 

You don’t have to go anywhere, attend any classes. Now Trick Titles are winnable via video and internet! We know it may not be something that was on your radar before – but if you’re spending lots of time at home (like most of us) and you’re getting tired of television (like most of us) and going a little stir-crazy (like most of us), it’s something to think about.

Earlier this year, when we lived in a different world, Hope earned her certification as an American Kennel Club Canine Good Citizenship Evaluator. Along with that, she can teach the Star Puppy Classes, and be an Evaluator for the Trick Dog Title. 

Stop saying “no!”

Before you get all “Oh, I can’t do that!” – yes, you can. As a matter of fact, your dog can probably already do almost enough of the tricks for the Novice Trick Dog title:

  • Get in a box
  • Sit in a box
  • Balance beam (walk on a board a few inches off the floor)
  • Bark on cue
  • Crawl
  • Fetch it (and bring it back)
  • Find it 
  • Get your ____
  • High Five
  • Jump
  • Kennel up
  • Kiss
  • Push-ups
  • Shake hands
  • Touch it
  • Tunnel

A dog has to complete just 10 tricks to get the title!

Something to do

Aren’t you just itching to try some tricks? You know your dog can do that stuff! Check out our video “fun with a box.” It’s really where all the fun training starts. Teaching your dog anything all boils down to learning to reward the good stuff and ignore the rest. Get a box. And get our Trick Training Log. We developed all kinds of training logs so you can keep track of where you are in your journey. 

And when you’re ready – get in touch! Hope will be absolutely delighted to evaluate those videos. If you’re not ready, get in touch for some help. We’ll be happy to guide you on this fun, new adventure!

Can dogs see color – an experiment in dog color vision

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What kind of colors do dogs see? What is dogs’ color vision showing them about the world?

Last year Susan Garrett, a world-class agility instructor/competitor posted a video interview discussing what dogs actually see on an agility course – how color and contrast can help or hurt. We found it fascinating – but not particularly useful. We go to competitions in several different venues – all of them differ in lighting, equipment, and flooring. And there’s not much we can do about it.

Change in perspective

Since we’re dog nerds, we filed the information away in the back of our heads. Not particularly useful, but worth remembering.

Then we noticed that Tango, Fran’s 10-year-old Brussels Griffon might not be seeing things all that well. He’s fine. The veterinarian didn’t find anything particular going on with his eyes at this point, just some changes related to his age.

For our little training sessions we added another light to the area. And we try to make sure we’re not standing against the light so he can see better.  Tango flinches if we make sudden moves or a shadow passes over his eyes.

Trying an experiment

Then we remembered about the dogs color vision interview and decided to conduct a little experiment! One of Tango’s favorite games is putting little foam blocks into a bowl. The giant bucket of blocks has lots of colors, so we picked the same blocks in warm colors (yellow and orange) and cool colors (blue and green).

We tried each set individually. Then we put them all together to see if Tango would show a preference. Here’s the video:

Oh, well!

As far as we can tell – Tango didn’t care. He grabbed whatever block he noticed, regardless of color.

It wasn’t scientific, and it doesn’t prove anything. It also doesn’t invalidate the actual findings the experts talked about. But it was interesting and fun!