Re having the dog hold a sign,
it's not that hard to train a dog to do a trick you have WRITTEN down on a cue card, either.
It's probably easier to only train two cue card tricks, and then, over time, train more. You would first use the known verbal cue, and have dog associate that known word,
with your cue card, and then,
fade out the verbal cue.
(sorry for duplication, i just recently posted this on some other thread)
The dog does not have to be trained to recognize the actual lettering (THAT'd be hard)
but,
the dog can easily be trained to do his known cues
to YOUR body positioning,
or the way you hold a cue card.
For example, you could train Miles to sit, when you hold the cue card with both of your hands on the top border of the cue card.
IT NOW APPEARS YOUR DOG CAN "READ"!!!
You could train Miles to rollover when you hold the cue card with one hand on each vertical border of the card that says "rollovr"
You could train Miles to bark to a cue card you hold with your eyebrows lifted UP.
You could train Miles to lie down when you hold a cue card with one hand on top border,
and one hand on bottom border.
My dog is very keen about which is my left hand,
and my right hand. He can easily tell them apart, and for *my* dog, that difference IS an entirely different cue to HIM..
Other body cues could include your feet spread apart, or one leg bent, your head tipped to one side, or even the finger positioning on the cards, like have one finger of each hand on front side of card, endless list really.
and do consider
adding in HUMOR to trick,
for example, making the cue cards ask a question, to which dog is "answering" the question.
Like, for rollover, have cue card read, "Miles, what does ___(politician you don't like)__do?"
etc etc.
For lie down, "Miles, are you tired?" OR "Miles, what did the __(sports team)__do last week?"
The beg trick
lends itself very well to
humor, as does a bark.
as does teaching a dog to lift his one back leg up as if he is going to pee.
Even if you don't use cue cards, you can train a dog to do a trick to
an entire verbal question.
but, you
train dog to do his trick to the LAST word of your question, otherwise, dog does trick TOO soon, before you've even finished asking him the question.
Probably over half of my dog's tricks are done to
funny questions, and my dog sits there waiting, til he hears the one word --the last word---that he was trained to respond to.
Here is an OLD trick, which i have since swapped out the question. But back in 2008, this was current, but, this question is now out of date now. But here, you can see Buddy waiting for LAST word of the question.
Oops. So now I want to teach Miles a sorta difficult, cool trick by the middle of August! Any ideas on what trick I could do?
But him hugging my leg always seemed like a cute idea; not sure if he's capable of it, though. I reaaaallllyy wish I could teach him to get a drink from a cabinet but we don't have any kind of shelves he could get it from. It may be to heavy for him also since he's such a baby
to teach to *my* dog!!
especially if you can get them to hold something in their Mouth or paws (like a rose, then you could call say: "Do you want to Tango?" lol Or you can make a sign for him to hold that says: "Welcome to the ____ family reunion!"
