Tricks!

Here is Pickles showing off all the tricks he knows.

Up up - means sit up with a straight back.  We taught this by luring him into the position with a treat.  It took quite a while for him to build up the stomach muscles to be able to do it.  I think we've been working on it off and on for a month.  Over the past week we've been focusing a lot on it and he finally has it!

Spin - turn around clockwise.  This was also a lure with the treat at first.  It didn't take him long to get away from the lure and only need a hand motion, but going from hand motion to only verbal without any hand signal took 2-3 weeks.  Now we're working on twirl which means turn counter clockwise.  I think he's learning it a lot faster, though he does tend to guess and spin if we don't give the hand motion quickly enough after the verbal cue.

Roll Over - he's known this one for quite a while.  Evvie helped us out working on it for the week she was here.  Now that he knows spin though sometimes he gets confused and stands up and spins instead of rolling over.

We're also working on bye bye - which means paw at the air twice, crawl which is crawling along the ground, and look cute which means cock your head to one side.