What should I teach my dog?

In My Humble Opinion
1

In mid-May Foxy Lady and I adopted an adorable schnoodle named Daisy. She is now 5 1/2 months old, and in the two months she has been part of our household we have discovered that Daisy is very intelligent. She already has a large working vocabulary (i.e. sit, stay, come, shake, walk, up, down, kiss, lay, etc.), and she seems to love to learn.

Although my wife and I both had dogs growing up, neither of us had dogs who knew much beyond the basics. Since Daisy has displayed both a capacity and a willingness to learn, we would like to teach her as much as she is able to absorb. My question is, what commands and behaviors should we teach her? I would love to hear your suggestions. They can be practical or just-for-fun. For example one friend suggested “play dead.” Somebody else recommended putting a small bell by the door and teaching her to bat it when she wants out (as opposed to her current technique of scratching the door – effective, but not good for the door).

What do you think?

2

Our Dog, Dongle, will take off your socks, if you ask. It’s a fun trick that he learned on his own.

3

Fun trained behaviors I’ve seen:
Hitting light switches (presumably she’s not tall enough, though)
Fetching a kleenex in response to a “sneeze”
Play dead in response to a finger pointed like a gun and “bang”
Yawn
Speak
Whisper (tiny woof)
Gimme Five

One of my favorites is one taught to his own dog by a professional dog trainer. It’s called “Chick Magnet”–the dog picks out a lady (presumably by some subtle signal), and cuddles up to her, making big puppy eyes and generally being excessively cute, heh.

Trick training is fun–keeps your pup learning and keeps you interacting with the dog far beyond basic obedience.

This is a good book for a start: How to Teach an Old Dog New Tricks

Have fun!

4

My brother has some tiny fluff of a dog (Ginger is her name) that he claims hates him.

While sitting, he’ll pat his lap and calls for Ginger to jump into his lap. At that, the dog will walk to someone else and jump into their lap.
There seems to be no logic as to whom Ginger will pick to grace with her lap-dog trick; just so long as it’s not my brother.

Now, I’m certain that Ginger doesn’t hate my brother. It’s an elaborate trick to be sure. But my brother plays it up completely and never will let on that it’s something he’s trained her to do.

5

My dog, Zim, is a two-year-old white pit bull we got from the pound. He was 16 weeks old when we got him, and housebroken! He knows his basic obedience commands and we’ve also taught him a lot of “tricks”, too. Here’s a list of some of the commands we use for some of his tricks:
[ul]
[li]shake - Offers a paw to “shake hands”[/li][li]high five - Present your hand palm forward to him and say “high five” and he’ll slap ya five wih his paw - even if he has to get up on his hind legs to do it (he will not jump up on you, though, just give you five.)[/li][li]speak - A quiet growly sort of vocalization[/li][li]sing to me - He will quietly yowl, modulating his “voice” as though he’s singing.[/li][li]silent movie - He opens and closes his mouth as though he’s barking, but no sounds come out. This one is really funny to watch.[/li][li]gimme that - Point to any object on the floor, say gimme that, and Zim will pick it up in his mouth and hand it to you.[/li][li]gimme a burp - Yes, he will burp on command. My wife hates this one.[/li][/ul]
He does a couple of non-command tricks, also:
[ul]
[li]We have a pair of large jingle bells hanging from the doorknob of the back door. When he wants to go out, he noses the bells to ring them. [/li][li]We sometimes let him lick off plates. We’ve taught him to pick the plate up when he’s finished and hand it back to us (an extension of the gimme that trick, but he doesn’t need to be told.)[/li][/ul]

Nearly all of these tricks were developed simply from things he started to do on his own, or natural behaviors, that we encouraged and associated with a command. If you have a dog that’s smart and eager to please, there’s no limit to the stuff you can teach him to do. Just remember that if you plan to teach him complicated tricks, break them down into steps and train them individually, then “put them together”. We’re working on teaching Zim to pick up paper plates and put them in the trash. He already knows to pick up paper plates, now we are teaching him to bring them to the trash and drop them in. I’m sure it won’t be long before he can pick up the plate, walk it directly over to the trash, and toss it. Good luck!

6

I visited a guy one time, whose dog was exceptionally smart and well-trained. He would sit up on his hind legs in begging position, and the guy would put a biscuit on the dog’s nose. The dog would sit there like that, until his master snapped his fingers. Then the dog would flip the biscuit off his nose and into his mouth without dropping it, every time.

After doing this for awhile, the guy said “OK, now go watch TV.” The dog went trotting down the few steps into the living room, and climbed up on the footstool, lay down and watched TV. Darnedest thing I ever saw!

7

My best friend has taught her dogs to shake on the command ‘Vote for me.’

Not a trick, but teach your dog NOT to jump up on people. (Pet peeve alert). I know she’s a wee schnoodle (my brother had one called Jessica; his SIL’s sister liked the name so much there is now a 20 year old girl called after a dog!), but even wee claws can hurt legs or tear tights.

My two puppies weigh nearly 8 st each – which is just about my weight. The boy is very calm, but his sister is like a kangaroo, and she’s got those nasty hard claws, too. I absolutely hate it when she jumps on me, and I asked my partner NOT to encourage her to jump. He’s 6’7" and will pat his chest to get her to jump up on him.

And then there’s me, having to lash out with leg kicks like a ninja to keep her from knocking me over whenever I go outside – it’s the inconsistency, and she doesn’t know any better.

For damage control, she has been taught when she comes inside to visit (the pups are outdoor dogs), that she has to have ‘inside manners’ and she doesn’t jump at all inside. For outside, she has learnt that if she wants to greet me and get a cuddle (and not a ‘Bloody hell get down off me!’), she is to jump up against the porch railing, and lean on that whilst she gets a scratch and a cuddle.

Strangely enough, both pups have learnt which of the indoor toys are ‘theirs’ – my partner has been away much of the summer, so we’ve developed new routines – when he was home and I let this cohort of dogs in to visit, he went running for his good shoes to rescue them (because our first set of dogs would chew anything, even stuff that was nailed down), and was amused to see the pups ignore everything, his shoes, cat toys, even a bag of biskies in their reach, to go only for their special toys.

What I like is when you realise that a dog has learnt something from you that you didn’t teach them! When the girl pup is good, obviously I praise her and speak nicely to her, and smile, cos she is a nice dog – and bloody hell if now the girlpup doesn’t kind of make high pitched sing songy noises when she’s happy and I swear to you, grins at me! Sometimes just on the one side, as I sometimes have a lopsided grin.

One of the older dogs has learnt to speak, as well – I suppose partly because we talk to them so much, they associate vocalisation with socialisation. But this dog has a funny sort of howly greeting that sounds exactly as if she’s saying ‘Harold’ which is my partner’s middle name. We encouraged her, and now she says it all the time.

My dogs know No, Go to bed, Go downstairs, Go in the house, Go get your milk/biskie, Let’s do the sheep, Put your shoes on (ie we’re going outside), and Clean up in aisle 3 (ie there’s cat vomit on the carpet, take care of that, would you?)

8

French.

Teach your dog French.

Do the whole, fetch, roll over, etc, but use French.

You’ll have a bilinguial dog. Wow the neighbors! :cool:

9

Teach your dog that she does NOT get a vote on subjects like toenail trimming, ear cleaining, mouth opening, and having food/toys taken away from her. This will save you quite a lot of struggle and vet bills down the road. If I had a dollar for every nail trim I did because the animal “won’t let” the owner do it, I’d be having my indoor/outdoor cat run added to the house right now. A lot of the time, the nail trim was the sole purpose of the visit, and we charged 'em $10 each time. Also, keeping her ears clean will help prevent ear infections (which require daily cleaning and medication, not to mention another vet bill.) Being able to take things away from her safely will come in hugely handy when she’s decided she wants to eat a bottle of Tylenol, or chicken bones, or the quilt your grandmother made for you right before she died.

Above all else, you MUST socialize her properly. I cannot emphasize this enough. Expose your dog to a variety of new people and experiences. Take her to PetSmart or similar places and let her get used to being around a lot of activity and strangers being around. Let non-family members take her places, so she gets used to the idea that she’s okay, even if you’re not there. There will be times when someone else has to take care of her without you, and the less stressful that is for her, the better. (It’s also safer for whoever’s dealing with her, as a panicked dog is often a biting dog, but that’s really a secondary consideration.)