Me & Mercy

CrazyDogLady

New Member
Hi everyone!

I'm having a particularly boring day at work, so I decided to Google some fun tricks to work on with my Akita/JRT mix, Mercy. She's about 14 months old and has been living with me since Thanksgiving weekend, wehen I drove from Boston to Western Ohio to bring her home.

She has taught me a great lesson about not letting life get to you. When she was a stray, sombody shot her and the damage required her leg to be amputated. But she doesn't let it slow her down one tiny bit!

Looking forward to getting to know you all,
Wendy
 

tigerlily46514

Honored Member
WELCOME!! and KUDOS to you for rescuing a dog in need! CUUUUTE dog!
If you are looking for how to teach Mercy some tricks, you've come to the right place!

It's easy, it's fun, and even 5 or 10 minutes per day is enough to teach a trick, really.

Here's some good threads to read to get started:
Most of us here use clickers, if you've not tried one, you should, dogs "get" the trick soooo much faster:
http://www.dogtrickacademy.com/blog/clicker-training



IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS, JUST ASK!! Looks like everyone is getting ready to teach "Are you shy?" , or "Boo!" (dog covers his eyes)
or whatever cue you want to use,
on this thread, and Anneke has posted great "how to" video, as well:
http://www.dogtrickacademy.com/members/forums/threads/teach-your-dog-to-cover-there-eyes.4329/
 

Dogster

Honored Member
Rescuing a dog in need is great! Congrats on finding one that is so darn CUTE!!! My dog Shivon is adopted too. As for tricks, you should start simple, then work your way up to the harder ones. Good luck!!!!
 

CrazyDogLady

New Member
Thanks for the welcome and for the links. Right now, we're still working on the basics like loose leash walking and focus, but I definitely want to start some basic tricks as soon as she's ready. I can't wait.
 

tigerlily46514

Honored Member
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! :ROFLMAO: Part of this is cuz Buddy is a family dog, and *somebody* does allow Buddy to pull....:rolleyes: 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!:ROFLMAO: )
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"!!:LOL:

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,:rolleyes: 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!
 

tigerlily46514

Honored Member
btw, i had a LOT of trouble conveying what loose leash walking was all about, to my dog. Oh i did! Others here helped me teach my dog, but wow, i sure did have some struggles on that one.

Here is a video that helped me:
Maybe it will give you some ideas, as well.

The one thing,
of alllllll the things i tried,
that helped *me* teach my dog, was,
asking my dog to CHOOSE to return to me, asking my dog to participate in staying beside me. It was like, every time i stood still, and asked him to CHOOSE to return to me, as seen in video below,
everytime i did that, Buddy's brain hit 'reset' button or something.


Another thing that helped, was hiding my extenda-leash. For my particular dog, that extenda-leash messed up *my* dog's ability to sort out, "Okay, yesterday i had a 20 foot leash..and today i have a 6 foot leash.."
 

tigerlily46514

Honored Member
This video, also about 3 minutes long,
also by kikopup,
has some details for specific issues that can arise in trying to teach "loose leash".

 
Top