Today Zora and I reviewed some of our tricks in prep for taking the new AKC Trick Dog tests.
Her balance beam trick is my favorite. I taught it to her last summer on a whim, balancing on a 4×4″ beam we had in the back yard. It was hysterical fun. The one we had in the back yard was long enough for her to turn around completely on without any feet touching the ground. And at the dismount she’d do her paws up cuteness trick, adorable. And funny. We were both laughing her and me.
Our Novice Trick practice video:
We also practiced some of our intermediate and advanced tricks.
Some of our intermediate tricks especially need some brush up. Her getting a toy by name has obviously gotten a bit rusty! And I think I might change which of our Advanced tricks we do in the evaluation. Maybe add in her skateboarding trick, or her weave poles.
Tricks are a fun way to train, bond and just enjoy time with my dogs. Many of the things we’ve done as tricks turn out to be incredibly useful skills as well. I don’t often purposefully decide “today I’m going to teach my dog a trick!” For us tricks are usually more a result of life necessity (such as I swear to god we are not going to lose yet another tennis ball in this field!!) or boredom (like her shark avoidance trick. Where I was bored after 3 days of bed rest and she brought me her fish toy. So I made the JAWS music and pretended the fish was a shark coming at her. She learned to “abandon ship!!!” leaping happily from the bed as I sang the JAWS ‘dun dun. dun dun.’ theme. I really need to video that one, it’s hysterical)
