Yes/no Training For Video

I've taught the no to be more of a head shake rather than side to side. I've also experimented with the side to side trick, but of course moved on before completed like most of them

The way I was working on it was using two targets taped in a door way, up at nose height. Requiring a random number of touches before rewarding. At first I clicked one, then rewarded a topposite target, then did the other one and again rewarded opposite. When the dog started to anticipate where the treat was going to be I went to the random number of touches before rewarding. I got the head movement in a few sessions but never bothered fading the targets.

Never taught yes, but I would guess you could try going for the head movement up. Maybe fake tosss a treat? I think up would be easier than down as less likely to lie down or just look weird. But this approach might lead more to a "what's up" head pop trick rather than repeated nodding.

This trick was very very hard for my dog.
I used post-it notes, on two bar stools.

over time, i could move the bar stools further apart.

Once i tried using the bar stools, it went way easier, he "got it" then.

but at first,
I actually had to shelve the whole trick,
and re-introduce it a month later to get him to understand.

for my dog, this was one of his hardest tricks of all. this one, and cross paws, were his 2 hardest tricks. Lots of tricks i thought were harder, he nailed 'em, easily, but not shake head.

One of the very few videos i have of Buddy:
(obviously, i need a new question, but back then, this question was great.)

he throws in the lil verbal "no" on his own. but it works out perfectly, though, doesn't it??

Buddy was getting stoked/excited, cuz we could not work the camera, and he had to keep repeating the trick, over and over, then we'd realize we had no sound, or it was dark, etc, so by the time we got this filmed, by then, Buddy was throwing in verbal noises........ on his own......


funny dog.


He really CAN do a more prolonged turning of his head back and forth, but we were just so stoked we'd figured out how to work the borrowed camera, that by then we weren't even really paying att'n how well he was doing the trick by that time!

i haven't taught "yes" yet, either.

i'd probably do same method i did for "no",
and just attach post-it notes onto some stationary object,
and reward touching both targets. Of course, it'd be up and down moves.
then move object away and away.

I haven't trained yes, but a few years ago I had a go at shake head(no). I used this tutorial by kikopup

Here is a vid of one of my sessions. For some reason I never finished the trick. Maybe now I will

I've done a 3 or 4 sessions on this.

I got fed up of post-its after the first 3 minutes and used a stack of treats on either side. When Zac glanced one way or other I clicked the movement. A bit risky as it rewarded him for looking at the treats . I also clicked him for looking to one side out of the window and rewarded on other side. For a while it is like clicking a loss of attention that doesn't happen with post-its so I think the post-it method is probably better.

Now I am just clicking for any side to side movement. There is not much yet - a very slow head turn to one side and then back to facing me, at first he was just doing eyes left without moving his head so I guess there is some improvement . What movement there is, is now totally independent of lures and targets and I'm hoping to be able to shape it into a full shake head eventually.

I wish i had video camera, cuz Buddy can shake his "No" even better than in that video above, with several repititions of the head shake, way more than he did in the video. I liked him to do two turns to each side, for this trick, but in video of mine, he is only doing one turn to each side.

It looks better with two turns, which is how Buddy usually does it.
But, Buddy has tendency to zoom through all tricks, always tries to speed the trick up,
and like i said,
we were having so much trouble figuring out our friend's video camera, that by the time we conquered using the camera, Buddy had already done the trick many times, so he was beginning to zoom it up, we were more focused on the camera,
than on him by then! ha ha!!

I've just started training Diesel to do this today! I'm videoing each session so I can put them all together at the end. We are using the post it method. We've done two 5 minute sessions and he seems to have got the idea now, haven't put a word to it yet I'm trying to think of something funny for the cue

Ok, so I just started to give this the cue "Are you a bad dog?" Unfortunately, Diesel decided to say YES instead LOL


He drives me mad though, we had the best headshake yet, side to side a couple of times, so i clicked and gave a big reward. Not realising he had backed up a few steps while doing it. So the next few tries included great headshakes but also walking backwards. I didn't want him to walk backwards, & realising I'd rewarded it by accident, I asked him to sit and do the headshake, but his headshake wasn't as good then. Never mind, all part of the learning process, we'll get there

too cute, Horsy, i totally know just what you mean, about one (1) wrong click, and bam! dog then decides he needs to do this or that to get a click! ohhhh, do i ever know just what you mean!!

VERY CUTE dog! Nice work!

Jean, are you making a "how to" video of this?

Jean, did Chase find this trick a lil more difficult than some tricks are? Just curious, how you'd rate this trick as far as difficulty.
Of all Buddy's tricks, this one, "shake head no"
and cross-paws were the hardest ones for my particular dog.

//"Chase got it pretty quick"//

oh shut up Jean.




(is a joke of course!)