Greetings from New Jersey

jerseygirl1000

New Member
Hi!

So excited to find this site!

I have 3 pups: Moonie (10-year-old male pug), Fiona (7-month-old female Kerry Blue Terrier) and Finnegan (2-year-old male Kerry Blue Terrier).

Finn is a rescue – I've had him since November. He has a lot of fears and anxiety which we have been working on. He gets too stressed going to class so I work with him at home. He is such a smart boy and catches on pretty fast. I think learning these tricks, etc. is really helping to build up his confidence.

Fiona is will be graduating her 2nd obedience class this coming week. She's totally fearless which has been a real help for Finn. She's also in agility and is doing very well so far. We are working on a trick for her class graduation on Saturday. I taught her spin, but then overheard my trainer say that spin was easy to teach, so I'm trying to figure something else out.

Moonie... Well, Moonie has no interest in learning new tricks. He literally will walk away and go take a nap. I'm okay with that – if learning tricks is not fun for him then I'm not going to force him. He has all his basic obedience down. Other than that, he would rather be sleeping.

Learning forward to learning more!

Kindly,
Emily
 

Jean Cote

Administrator
Staff member
Hi Emily!

Welcome to the Dog Trick Academy. It is great to see someone interested in dog training, and specifically in tricks training. I'm sure that you've browsed through the website already and found many useful information. What we usually do here is train our dogs to do tricks because they love to do them. We make our training sessions so fun and exciting that it is our dog's highlight of the day.

There are basically three elements that must be followed for successfully training a dog to love his training.

1. You need to train your dog using the type of reinforcement that your dog loves. They are food, toys, and praise. Most dogs will favor 1 above the other 3. And in most cases, it is food or toys.

Let's say that your dog is not interested in food, you may just try using something a little more convincing like sausages or beef heart (I know it sounds gross, but dogs usually go nuts for this). Basically you just want to work with something that your dog is interested in.

2. You must keep your training session sweet and short. A session doesn't have to be long to be effective. 10 minutes per session is plenty of time! And twice or three sessions per day will produce quick results. For example, I usually train in the morning before going to work and once more when I come back home, and I don't train more than 10 minutes. :dogsmile:

3. End your training sessions on a good note. Which means to stop the training session when your dog is actually doing good, and that he is interested. I think that its human nature to keep on going, but from my own experience, I've noticed that if I end my session on a positive note, my dog will be even more enthusiastic about the next training session.

I also usually play or let them do something that they LOVE to do afterwards. For my Border Collie I will play a game of tug or retrieving after training. That gives her something to look forward to and to make the entire training sessions fun.

Anyhow, there is much more info to give you but I can't in just one post. :dogsmile: I hope that you enjoy the site and that if you need any help, please do not hesitate to write. We are just a few keystrokes and mouse clicks away. :D

-- Edit --
P.S. I forgot to mention something about your 10 year old dog. Basically you will just have to train him to do very simple things like touching targets with his nose and stuff. Older dogs still love spending time with you and being the focus of attention. It might be a bit slow at first since he might not have been trained for a while, but 5-10 mins per day really isn't much of a sacrifice. :D
-- ---- --

Sincerely,
Jean
 

valerie

New Member
Greetings from NJ

Hi Emily,
I am also from NJ - I have 4 German Shorthaired Pointers, all of whom absolutely LOVE training games. Max is a 7 yr. old male, Seamus is his 3 yr. old son. Mia is a 4 yr. old female and Lucy is her 19 wk old daughter. Finding the time to work with each one individually is challenging, but somehow we squeeze it in. Sometimes I'll work with the 3 older dogs together, or sometimes with 2. Right now I'm trying to use shaping to train Max to put things in the laundry basket, and I'm trying to train Lucy to fetch the newspaper without ripping it apart! There's lots of good stuff on this site, even though I don't get to check it often enough! Jean has wonderful information in her post.
Best,
Valerie
 

Jean Cote

Administrator
Staff member
Hi Valerie! Great to have another jersey girl on board. I went to New Jersey about 3 years ago for a seminar, I liked it. Yes it can be challenging to train multiple dogs at the same time, what I found that works best is to devote a 20-30 minutes chunk of time and train each dog one after the other. I find that the one waiting will be more enthusiastic too, so I always switch it up. :dogsmile:

Enjoy the site!

P.S. Jean is french for John. I'm actually a guy. :dogwink:
 

valerie

New Member
Oops!! Sorry, Jean! :doghuh:

You're absolutely correct about the level of enthusiasm in the dogs left waiting their turn. We have formal training sessions of 5-15 minutes per dog (depending on whether I'm training something new or just practicing) and then we have informal training, which is anytime I'm home with the dogs. They're always learning or practicing something! The more they learn, the better they become at learning, and the more eager they are to be taught new things.

Valerie
 

Jean Cote

Administrator
Staff member
No Problem. Everybody assumes that when they first read my Name, and then they realize I'm a guy when they see me in the classroom lessons, LOL!
 
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