The Only Dog Tricks Book You'll Ever Need by Gerilyn J. Bielakiewicz

Author:Gerilyn J. Bielakiewicz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adams Media
Published: 2011-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Lab Mix holding his leash

Working on the Quality of the Trick

Working on the quality of the tricks you teach is important. The qualities of distance, speed, and duration will help you polish your tricks and let you expand them to more elaborate performances. Distance pertains to how far away from your dog you can be and still have him perform the trick; speed refers to how fast he can execute it; and duration indicates how long he'll hold it.

The key is to work on improving one aspect of your dog's performance at a time. For instance, if you want to teach your dog to wave to you at a distance, you would not ask him to hold the wave (duration) for any longer than he normally offers it. Similarly, you would not work him at a distance if you were trying to work on the duration of the wave. Separating these variables of trick training will help your dog learn faster, more consistently, and more reliably.

Distance

To increase the amount of space between you and your dog, you simply need to lower your standards for all other aspects of the trick except his ability to perform the behavior (however sloppy) at gradually increasing distances. Start with the dog close and reinforce him for gradually increasing distances. You will know if you have gone too far because he will make mistakes. This means you should shorten the distance to where he was reliable and continue more slowly.

Once you have him working reliably at one distance, go ahead and gradually increase it until you are satisfied with the performance. Don't be afraid to go back to the beginning if your dog falls apart and you lose the behavior entirely. If you go back to the beginning and start again, your dog will catch on more rapidly and give you an even better performance.

Speed of Execution

The speed with which your dog performs a trick refers to the time between the moment you give the command and the time the dog actually starts to perform the behavior. To improve your dog's speed it is helpful to pick a number of seconds in which he has to perform the trick and only reward those repetitions that fall within your time limit. Anything more gets ignored. It takes most dogs only a short time to realize that it is how fast they perform the behavior that counts. Don't forget that if you are working on the speed with which your dog responds to the command, you should lower your standards for other aspects of the trick.

Duration

This aspect also refers to time, but deals with the amount of time the dog must hold the behavior, such as leaving his paw up to wave, before you reward him. You can teach duration by delaying the click for varying amounts of time and only rewarding repetitions that are longer than average. As you increase the duration, go slowly so as not to lose the behavior altogether. If you increase the

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