Saga comes running every time I open a new loaf of bread, because she knows I will give her the heel.
She also follows me when I walk with a cup of coffee, because I have the shakes and I slosh it. She LOVES coffee, and she cleans up the drips that hit the floor behind me. I thought this was just typical ‘dog searching out sweet stuff’ behavior, but I finally realized she was watching for me to be walking with a mug. If I leave my coffee mug somewhere, she’ll DRINK IT.
By teasing/playing with my dog I inadvertently trained her to bark like mad at any instance of a bright shiny spot of light. Or I can pretend to shine a flashlight at the ground and she will bark at that too.
My boxer/black mouth cur is 12 and lays on the couch all day. When I put on my shoes, he gets up and expects to go somewhere.
I used to have a border collie, who was too clever and resented any attempts to train her. She would do the exact opposite out of spite. I lined the den with newspapers when trying to housebreak her, and she would poop right in the 1/8" gap between pages. She actually did obey one thing though. When I’d walk the dogs, our path would take us across the neighborhood to a circle at the end of a street. At the top of the circle was a path that cut through to a city park, which contained the dog park. She’d start down the path, and I’d say “No, not tonight” if I wanted to cut the walk short, and she’d come back. I didn’t set out to train her. I just said it so often, she picked up that if I said this particular human word jumbo, it meant we were going back.
I have had dogs most of my life, and all have picked up on things I didn’t expect. My favorite was a Mutt rescue we had. I know some will go “eww.”
You know how sometimes dogs will sit and scoot across the carpet. Often a sign of a problem, but we took him to the vet a few times too be checked and everything was fine. Turns out he just liked to scratch his butt.
Apparently I commented on his “Itchy Butt” whenever he did it. Turns out he learned and liked this trick. We were in our 20’s and it was a fun party trick to give him the command and he would scoot across the room right in the middle of everyone wagging his tail the whole way. It always got a good laugh, and friends found out he knew this trick and would call him out from time to time… he always seemed to enjoy it.
We have a dog and a cat. My wife feeds the cat in a certain spot in our kitchen; sometimes there is a piece of dry cat food that gets left behind when my wife puts the dish of food away.
So now whenever our dog enters the house (after going for a walk or playing in the yard, say), she will sprint immediately to that spot in the kitchen in the desperate hope that a piece of cat food has magically appeared there.
As a puppy, my dog would get so excited at feedings he would jump up on his hind legs to see what was in the bowl. This led to me moving the bowl in a circular motion as I was putting it on the ground to stop him from “locking on the to target.” His counter strategy was to follow the motion of the bowl by spinning in a circle.
I thought it was hilarious so I kept it up. He now does 2 or 3 spins each time I feed him.
Spins. I love that.
Our cat learned, as a kitten, to come when one of the kids whistled. Now any time anyone whistles a song, he shows up. And we have a lot of whistlers in the house, so he dopily runs from person to person.
Since I have been trapped working from my kitchen table for the last six months my neighborhood critters have trained me to feed them. I had been buying large bags of walnuts, pecans and almonds from Costco and can’t eat them all. I also like Spanish peanuts but eat too many if they are around.
The Blue Jays, Cardinals and Squirrels await for me to feed them an assortment nuts every morning and afternoon. If I don’t place a handful of nuts on my deck by certain times they start making noise in my direction. The squirrel gives pouts at me as well. My cats get worked over this, fun for everyone.
I am attempting to experiment to see if they have a preference for one nut over the other. Right now it appears to be based on size if the nut, as they eat the larger ones first. Damn I’m bored.
Taking the tops off of water bottles. Any plastic bottle really, but Duke has a real thing for water bottles. He used to chew on the bottle for a while, maybe pull off the label, but now he just pulls off the top. He’ll keep an eye out for anyone drinking from a water bottle and he wants to rip off the top when you’re done. Now Sammy has picked up on this also. He has no idea why Duke is doing it, but if Duke does it then Sammy wants to do it too.
A friend of mine was trying to teach his new dog not to bark so much at everything, so he got a shock collar. You set the control to issue a mild shock and a beep, beep, when the dog is barking when it isn’t needed. After a short time you can turn the shock setting off and get the same results with just the beep, beep setting and no shock.
This taught the dog to be very afraid of things that beep. Micro wave oven, beep, beep, beep. Garbage truck backing up, beep, beep, beep. Dog would get scared and run to hide. It eventually got over this fear, mostly.
Dallas_Jones, the world is way too full of things that beep. I am an old fart who remembers when the only thing that beeped at you was a car whose driver wanted you to get out of the way. I don’t see how it even works as an alert sound any longer, because everything is beeping, all the time, at least if one’s in town.
/end off topic rant, better say something on subject –
I have accidentally trained the New Cat to come running into the kitchen whenever he sees the Old Cat headed that way. Because the Old Cat needs to be coaxed to eat more, and therefore gets frequent offerings of Interesting Food; which she often does not finish. New Cat arrived here apparently knowing only about kibble. He has drastically expanded his food horizons.
I thought you were going to go all Terminal Man on us and say the dog learned to love the shocks and barks non-stop, now! 
Annie-girlie–our Border Collie–needs a pill every morning an hour before breakfast and said pill must be slathered in peanut butter. She has taught herself to wake us (actually my wife) up at 6:30AM for meds.
Millie, my previous dog was trained that the cocktail shaker being used meant we were going to go sit on the porch. As soon as he heard it, she’d get up and go to the door.
With Bartleby, my current hound, I made the mistake of rolling up a magazine and play chasing him around the house, trying to swat his butt. He loves it and now, I can’t read a magazine because as soon as I pick one up, it’s on! I’ll be sitting on the sofa and he’ll come up with a magazine in his mouth wanting to be chased.
My chihuahuas have figured out I’ll come straight awake if they move the mask off my face. If I sleep beyond their preferred time, they’ll push on it and generally mess around until it comes loose and I startle and wake up.