Friday, April 29, 2011

Walking on Your Feet - A Trick

Vinnie and Marsha make another Guest Trickster appearance!


*Before you teach this trick, it would be really helpful if you have already taught your dog a couple of the previous tricks: start up position and foot targeting.

*Start out by teaching your dog to target one of your feet. It doesn’t matter if they put one or both feet on your foot. Click for any foot movement by them and jackpot and physical contact with your foot.

*Once your dog is reliably targeting your foot, put them in their start up position and click and treat for any foot movement – jackpot for physical contact.

*Your dog will probably start targeting one foot consistently. Once they are doing this, start C/T for any foot movement from the other foot. If you have a smaller dog, you may want to angle your feet inward a bit to make it easier for them to get up on your feet.

*Once your dog will reliably get into position on your feet, start moving your toes in your shoes (don’t move your feet yet). Make sure you are giving a LOT of rewards for this – it’s weird for them to have things move under their feet!


*If your dog is comfortable with you moving your feet inside your shoes, start shifting your weight a little from side to side. Once they are comfortable with this, you can start taking small, shuffling steps (reward often!!).

*Start increasing the size of your steps as your dog gets comfortable with the movement. Make sure the size of your steps is appropriate for the size of your dog.

*This is a great trick for getting your dog used to things moving under his feet!!

*HAVE FUN!!!!!!!!!

2 comments:

  1. That is very dang cute. I think you could come up with an awesome Halloween costume w/him standing on your feet - something with two heads and four feet?

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  2. This looks adorable. I think I will have to add it to my list of tricks I would like to train.

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