I often say to my cat Spooky “Are you licking your wee-wee again? Isn’t that thing clean yet?”
When I had a working dog, we used to herd sheep and goats. She would work herself into a state of collapse if I let her, but when her tongue started to loll I would say “You look hot!” or “Go cool down!” and that was her cue to jump in the kiddie pool or trough full of water until she cooled off a little. If she barely got wet and jumped out again, I would say, “Nope, you still look hot” or something like that. She would drench herself until I decided she had cooled off enough then back to herding. If we were playing fetch and I didnt have the kiddie pool prepped, she would find a puddle if necessary.
Our dog is inclined to nervous licking, so we taught him, “No lick!” early on, and it actually works. In fact, if Mr. Legend merely comments, “I think that paw is clean enough now,” the dog will quit licking.
I also use “Stay” on the cats frequently, just for a laugh.
We had a dog when I was a teen/young adult. (She was put down shortly b4 my life went to hell)
Our weird commands were:
“Scratch your belly”-She roll over, paws up, get a good scratch
“Kitchen”-Her clue to go to the kitchen for the night
“Laundry!”
Her sleeping room / feeding room / banishment room. We send her to the laundry when she misbehaves, when visitors are due and we don’t want her to bark, and when she’s wet or muddy. Now we use it as a threat word to settle her down anytime. She gets very quiet and subdued when we say laundry.
My little girl cat Lemuria has a bad habit of over-scratching when she’s done in the litter box. She grabs the edge of the box and uses her claws to pull it toward her until it snaps back. POP! POP! POP! So annoying, and I’m sure my downstairs neighbor really appreciates it. If I tell her in a sing-song voice, "OK Lemur! All Done! Good Girl! Let’s Go! She stops and meanders over to wherever I am for scritches. Three of the four come to their name being called, the fourth doesn’t because he thinks he’s getting medicated. I’ve had to get sneaky about the prep because he recognizes when I’m getting the stuff ready and hides under the bed. Poor little guy. Such a love, though!
I can tell my dogs “Get the kitty” whenever the cat starts scratching on the furniture. The dog will then chase the cat away.
Now if only I could train them to do that when I’m not around.
My dog is my first pet, although my wife had dogs while growing up. Reading books on dogs, I was intrigued by the supposed ability to make your dog go on command. It works pretty well! She, an 8-yr old Chessie, is pretty regular and will do her #2 in the morning. She’ll do #1 on command, and if her bladder is pretty empty she will try.
#1 command: “Dodgers”
#2 command: “Cowboys”
Neither command is permitted to be preceded with the word “go.” After a healthy #2 I will often say, “Look at dem Cowboys.”
We are SF Giants and 49ers fans.
At night, “Go to bed” - he’ll get up & go in his cage & lie down.
In the morning, when he’s barkign to get out of his cage & I don’t wanna get out of bed yet, I’ll yell downstairs, “___ lie down” & he’ll stop barking & lie down.
“Drop it” - if I’m standning near him, he’ll drop whatever he shouldn’t have in his mouth. If he’s got room it means run away because he knows ‘they’ll chase me’. :rolleyes:
Non-verbal: He was abandoned & obviously beaten as a puppy. When we got him, if I raised my hand for any reason, say to scratch my ear, he would cower. I beat this out of him. I (playfully) hit him so much that now when I start to wail on him, he runs away, tail up high, & you can see his head scanning the room for THAT toy, which he runs back to me for a game of fetch. He loves to get ‘beaten’ now.
My cat Vincent appears to understand two phrases:
“Grammy’s room” - Follow me to my mom’s room where we’re going to watch TV.
“Nap time” or “Nite nites” - Come to bed, you fat badger. 
Sometimes he will go to my bedroom at bedtime without being asked. I think he pays a lot of attention to what I’m doing throughout the day, and can sometimes anticipate I’m about to go “Nine nites”.
He’s gotten a lot of reinforcement on these - We typically tell him what a smart boy he is, pet him, etc. when he follows our suggestions.
Now if I could just get him to stop laying on whatever I’m reading or writing, that would be perfect.
One of mine is “go see” which means “take your blasted toy to that other person for them to throw”. Sadly, my dog is getting on in years and can’t really hear all that well anymore. She’s at the “clap or snap” with hand motions phase of her life. (sigh). Luckily I trained her pretty well early on.
The other one is not really a command, but the lack of one, and I’m not sure how “uncommon” it is. I never taught her to not jump on me, because I played frisbee with her, (at the suggestion of other “disc dog” trainers). She can’t really do all of the tricks she could do before, but she can still catch them and occasionally do a small fly off the knee maneuver. I don’t normally do anything but a short light toss though, I don’t want her hurting herself. Though when she does that Aussie “punch with the paws” thing I do say “QUIT!” and occasionally she’ll stop.
My cat knows that when I say “I’ve got bad news for you” it means I’m going to get up, even though she just settled down on my lap. She’ll look at me as if to say “seriously? I JUST started purring, are you sure you want to move”? Usually she’ll get up then, but if she doesn’t as soon as I shift the edge of the throw blanket, she’ll hop to the side and wait for me to come back.
If I say “treat-treat”, even from another room, my cat will stop whatever it’s doing and come running.
“Be sweet” means “Stop biting my hand if you want a belly rub” he’s got that one down.
Anois!! (ann-ish) means “Now!” whatever I’m asking him to do he knows not to mess around but do it immediately.
“Go pee-pee” he’s learning to use the toilet. (score!)
“Dyawanngo?!?” means go get your leash, you can come wih us.
“Go look in your bowl” means I’ve left him some yummies; he goes running!
“Shake” I drape a towel over him after his bath and he shakes on command two or three times before I dry him with towel number two and then he takes off to do his “Super Dog” crazy run around the house.
A standard part of Guide Dog training is “do your business” to tell them to relieve on walks. Still works at 8, though she goes by herself also.
When running in the field behind the school, she likes to carry her tennis ball in her mouth. She’ll often drop it to investigate in the bushes. If I can find it, “find the ball,” causes her to go and get it from where she dropped it. She’s learned to do this since she turned five, so you can teach old dogs …
“Nice kitties” said in a warning voice will get them to stop fighting and start grooming each other with the most innocent expressions.
“Chill” means to stop being so aggressive.
“Soft Paws” means to stop clawing me.
“Kitties going out” or “Kitties coming in” means to be at the door.
“I’ve got to pee” means get off my lap, I’m getting up.
They respond better to lip smacking or hearing a plate hit the floor, than “Here kitty kitty.”
TruCelt, your “shake” reminded me of the wife of someone I used to fly with. She had one of those ugly little Mexican Hairless dogs. They sowed ‘bat wings’ onto one of it’s sweaters & taught it to shake. It looked like it was flying, which just made it even skeevier - a butt-ugly thing that could fly! :eek:
“Watch the house” in a serious tone like talking to a stupid person, then immediately turning and leaving. Stops the pity-me eyes and preps him.
“Hurry up” which makes him start thinking about pooping or peeing real soon instead of romping through the grass and bushes. When I was training him on this passers by would comment how mean I was to the dog, harassing and rushing him while he squatted. But then, of course, it was like winning the lottery for him after every poop.
I occasionally use bad French baby talk when speaking to the cats. “Elle est ma petite frou frou kitty”–that sort of thing. I couldn’t say why; they know even less French than I do.
That’s hilarious! CeltDog actually had a dragon costume last Halloween, but he hadn’t learned the comand yet.
It’s actually a great one to have in your repertoire, avoids a lot of inconvenience. Very simple to teach as well. Just throw the towel over them, give the command andthen blow in their ear. After the fourth or fifth bath you won’t have to blow anymore.
“scoot-scoot” means: get moving! get out of my way! You are in front of me and walking too slowly.