Hi Slimbek
Welcome to the group. Congrats on adopting a mixed breed
Every shelter dog adopted is another life saved!
We have an 8 month old Spoodle who picks up new tricks very fast, except he soon realises that once the treats come out, it's time to do every trick he knows - all at once(!!) - because he thinks he'll get something right.
Any tips for this?
I had the same problem with my dog, Calvin. It's mostly a problem of self-control -- the training and the treats are Too Exciting and the dog loses focus. I recommend Leslie McDevitt's Control Unleashed puppy book for general help -- she's got a lot of ideas on how to teach a dog to learn to bring himself back to earth, which is a wonderful skill for a dog to learn.
What I've started using in Calvin that works pretty well is Leslie McDevitt's Gimme a Break game. It works, I think, for two reasons. The first is because the dog gets a chance to get his/her ya-yas out by doing their own thing. The second is by way of the Premack Principle, which means that doing fun stuff is a great reward for doing harder stuff. Here's what happened with Calvin and I:
I get our gear out and start training. He's good for the 'boring' tricks but once we start doing leg weaves and other physical tricks, he starts jumping around, taking a bow (that is his FAVORITE), and yodeling. Before the yodeling starts, when I see he's getting ants in his pants, I cue "all done" and "go play" and I sit down and wait. He jumps around, yodels, runs around sniffing, etc. and when he's done, he comes back and lies down. I re-start training. He gets 'breaks' when I see he starts to get Too Excited.
Now when we first did this, in a 20 minute training sessions we probably took 4-5 breaks of about a minute or more each. Now we have training sessions with no breaks, but any time I see he is getting excited, I cue "all done" and "go play" and wait. Now his breaks are about 20 seconds long. I think that training itself has become easier because he knows there's an "out" when he gets too hyped, and because training itself has been bolstered by its association with him being able to yodel and carry on (super fun stuff for a dog!). So give your dog a break! It will improve focus, I promise. But check out McDevitt's book for more in-depth info.
Also check out September Morn's (that's a person's name!) Go Wild and Freeze game to teach your dog some impulse control.
Hope this helps!
- Couldn't resist Dogster
