ah, loose leash walking, can be an ongoing, off/on long term lesson for many many dogs.
Even after years, every once in a while, i have to give my own dog a quickie refresher course on why he doesn't want to pull!
Part of this is cuz Buddy is a family dog, and *somebody* does allow Buddy to pull....
but we're not saying any names...ha ha
Focus, or "look at me" or "watch me" is also an ongoing exercise with my dog, as i try to increase the difficulty level more and more. LIke if i am eating a bit of fish, and my dog is right there, instead of tossing him a bit of my fish,
i say, "look at me" while i hold a bit right by his nose. Yes, he keeps his eyes on me, while there is a bit of fish by his nose. Stuff like that. all the time. I have Buddy look at me, while other ppl squeak his favorite toys. (still hard for my dog to do that one!
)
all the time, for years, we work on this. I imagine, in 5 years, we'll still be honing that one.
Still, we work on other tricks, as well.
It's perfectly fine to teach a dog more than one thing in any given week, so long as the two tricks are not similar.
Like, you may not want to teach "lie down" and "roll over" in same week, as parts of the 2 tricks may seem the same
to the dog. Or "spin" and 'weave' might seem similar to some dogs. So you would want to teach tricks that are not the same, if you do teach 2 tricks in same week.
But, it'd be perfectly okay to teach tricks whicn are not much the same, for example,
"roll over" and "beg",
as those tricks are
not similar.
I myself, don't usually teach 2 tricks back to back in same lesson, sometimes i do, but usually not,
but instead, maybe at 2pm i work with Buddy on "beg" for 5 minutes
and at 4 pm, we work on "rollover" for 5 or 10 minutes........
I'm just using those as examples, those aren't our current lessons.
also, teaching a dog tricks in general, helps your dog increase his ability to pay att'n, to focus, to realize,
"ohhhhhh, mom's got that clicker, time for me to figure something out now!" I can almost picture him putting on his "thinking cap"!!
YOur dog will begin to go crazyhappy when he sees you get the clicker out of the drawer!!! Whenever you feel ready, just jump on in! Feel free to ask questions, the others here have taught me so so much, and have helped me so so much.
There is a nice bunch of dog lovers around here. some of us, like me,
needs lots of help, some of us are brilliant, some of us are more average, but all of us here get better and better at teaching tricks as we go along!
Enjoy!
