Has anyone here ever trained a chihuahua?

[XT]

My daughter wants to train our little dog to do tricks (he’s an old dog, but I’ve heard they can be taught tricks :p). About the only trick I know how to train a dog to do is to sit, stay and come to me on command…assuming I have a snack in my hand of course. She wants to train the dog to roll over, lay down and for some odd reason balance a treat on his nose. I have no idea how to do any of this. I figured I’d start here by asking if anyone has ever done this and how you started. I did some Google searching, but people were all over the place in how they did it…and some of them sounded wildly improbable.

[snfaulkner]

@XT

My daughter wants to train our little dog to do tricks (he’s an old dog, but I’ve heard they can be taught tricks :p). About the only trick I know how to train a dog to do is to sit, stay and come to me on command…assuming I have a snack in my hand of course. She wants to train the dog to roll over, lay down and for some odd reason balance a treat on his nose. I have no idea how to do any of this. I figured I’d start here by asking if anyone has ever done this and how you started. I did some Google searching, but people were all over the place in how they did it…and some of them sounded wildly improbable.

Roll over is really the only trick I’ve been able to get my chihuahuas to do. But it only too k a few hours and a sack of treats. Now any time i try to get them to do anything else, they immediately start rolling over each other and off the couch/bed.

Anywhooooo, how I did it is I just sat down with them and some treats. Hold a treat in their face and then move the treat to the floor/ground and tell them “down”. Then once I got them to go down on command, I would add “roll over” while rotating the treat in a circle in such a way that their noses would naturally pull their heads and eventually the rest of their bodies all the way over. They got the idea pretty quick.

[running_coach]

It’s really easy to train 'em to fly.

[seal_cleaner]

Ours flunked training. On the other hand, he has successfully trained us.

[HoneyBadgerDC]

My chihuahua does the basic, sits, stays, rolls over left and right, plays dead( kind of) gimme 5 both hands. But he has to have a treat or does nothing. My girlfriend trained him with treats. I always obedience trained my larger dogs but never used treats.

[XT]

@HoneyBadgerDC

My chihuahua does the basic, sits, stays, rolls over left and right, plays dead( kind of) gimme 5 both hands. But he has to have a treat or does nothing. My girlfriend trained him with treats. I always obedience trained my larger dogs but never used treats.

He only does anything if you have a treat. He won’t even come to me or my wife if we don’t have a treat. And he does this sad little thing where he looks like he’s about to get beaten every time we even approach him. He’s a rescue so I suspect he had a rather hard life before we got him.

[QUOTE=snfaulkner]
Roll over is really the only trick I’ve been able to get my chihuahuas to do. But it only too k a few hours and a sack of treats. Now any time i try to get them to do anything else, they immediately start rolling over each other and off the couch/bed.

Anywhooooo, how I did it is I just sat down with them and some treats. Hold a treat in their face and then move the treat to the floor/ground and tell them “down”. Then once I got them to go down on command, I would add “roll over” while rotating the treat in a circle in such a way that their noses would naturally pull their heads and eventually the rest of their bodies all the way over. They got the idea pretty quick.
[/QUOTE]

That sounds like a good plan. I’ll give it a try when I get home and let you know how it works. My daughter will be thrilled if we can teach him to do this.