Because yes, now that we can film everything that happens all day we do, here is Pickles with her limited repertoire tricks. See how she does almost everything with hand signals? That’s all me, baby. I rock at training my dog. Just her, though. The other two couldn’t care less about rolling over or even sitting. Oh well. At least I have one talented child, right?
The secret to training Pickles is threefold:
- Incessant repetition.
- Lots of patience
- An endless supply of treats.
No, really. But probably the best thing we have done with training her is to build on thing she does naturally. Every time she laid down, for instance, we threw a party. “Good girl, Pickles! Down! Good girl! Good down! Yay, Pickles! Down! Good girl!” Same with speaking (it helped when we barked, too, to get her started), sitting, and high-fiving. Rolling over was a little trickier because it necessitated basically yanking her legs out from under her and flipping her manually for a while, but she picked it up fast.
What should we teach her next? Leave your suggestions in the comments.