Jump to content
BC Boards

What fun parlor tricks do your dogs know?


Recommended Posts

So I'm trying to come up with ideas for new tricks to do in anticipation for the summer months (since we won't be out too long), and thought I'd come here for inspiration.

 

For Caleb, it would be Say Your Prayers, where he puts both paws on my arm and bows his head under, or Cop Cop, where he puts his paws on my feet and we walk together; first one took a day or two, while Cop Cop took quite a bit. I'm currently teaching him to hug a stick so I can teach him to hug my leg.

 

What parlor/fun/goofy tricks do your dogs know?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sit Pretty, bow, spin (both ways) retrieve items to my hand or a box, scoot backwards, walk backwards, weave between my legs -both figure 8 style and while walking. Sit, down and stand both up close and at a distance. Send outs to a base, go around an object, go touch an object, perch on various objects. Roll over, lay on side. Shake, fist bump.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lyka bows, gives five, retrieves toys by name, and we are working on Yoga, which is the opposite of a bow (front up back down).

 

Lily balances treats on her nose, hides by placing a paw over her face, and sleepy (wiping a paw on her face twice).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mine don't have nearly as many so some others do, but Bodhi does sit pretty, shake, high five, twist right and left, roll over, take a bow, hold a biscuit on his nose and catch it when released (however long that is) and yoga, which is a deep front stretch followed by a deeply extended back stretch.

 

He kinda sorta plays dead, but always dies with is head up. :P

 

I'm more focused on reactivity with Tansy than tricks, but she's recently learned shake and say your prayers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Brady does sit up, bow, say your prayers, spin (right), other way (left), go through (comes and sits in between my legs), around (from right to heel position), crawl, back, roll over, find it, individual names of toys, and high five with both paws. Say your prayers is a total party favorite. Every time he does it for people, they are amazed, lol.

 

This isn't a trick, but he also know place, which means to run and down on a blanket or towel and freeze until released. I got it from Control Unleashed to help with his door manners. He loves it so much that if you pull out a towel, he practically jumps on top of it before you're done laying it out!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

 

He kinda sorta plays dead, but always dies with is head up. :P

I have a friend that was doing a demonstration for a fund raiser and she did "Bang, your dead" with her dog. The dog kept his head up just like your dog and she she said, "Try again" and he put his head on the ground. I thought it was part of the trick but she said it wasn't. I have thought about training my puppy to do the trick but incorporating "Try again" into the trick because it was so funny.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh Duke has quite a list. And when Bonny get a over her puppy craziness and two second attention span, I'll begin training in ernest.

Sit Pretty

Stand (On two legs)

Get up (on four feet)

Back up

Turn around. (Hand signals for left and right)

Bring it here. (Anything he can in anyway get to me except metal objects. He refuses to touch those.)

Go around. (Things as small as a tree or as big as our hay barn and corral. Hand signals for directional.)

Touch my hand.

Bow

Play the piano

Up (Patting or pointing to object)

Jump (over my leg or other object or straight up in the air)

Climb a ladder

Back up a wall (In preparation for a hand stand)

Shake my hand

Other paw

Give me individual paws as I point them out.

Rear paw, front paw, or nose touches

Open the door (Jump on to push open or stick paw or nose in crack and pry it open)

Stand on hind legs

Walk on hind legs

Back up on hind legs

Back through legs

Sit before crossing road

Stay on the right side of the yellow line when biking

Get close (When a car is coming. Very little traffic on our rural roads makes biking off leash safe.)

Open your mouth

Put all feet on or in very small container, stool etc.

Turn on or in very small container, stool etc.

Ride a horse

Hold object

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tess knows some of the stuff mentioned by others, but I think what most impresses people is her retrieve/deliver skills. She retrieves anything I ask her for, by name or by pointing at the object, and delivers it to my hand. She will also deliver things to others when I ask, and kids specially love it: kid stops to watch us play frisbee; I say hi and ask kid's name. Ask if kid wants to play too; kid says yes, I tell Tess, while pointing, Go give the frisbee to Maria. And little Maria goes, She knows me!

Works even better with several kids, I will ask Tess to give the frisbee in turn to each one of them to throw, and even their parents kind of believe that Tess actually knows the names of these kids she just met.

I didn't train this though, she just gets it. I mean, I trained the retrieve, but the rest is just her favorite way of interacting with people. When, inevitably, people reach down to pet her, her reaction is always, yeah, loose the petting, will you? You have a frisbee in your hand, is it going to stay there for ever? We're busy here, man!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For me, it's the winter that prompts my trick training fervor. Short days, bitter cold and winter blahs keep me inside, and my dogs would go crazy if we didn't do SOMETHING.

 

Cohen knows ~200 tricks. My favourites are the rebounds and beg. Her favourites seem to be the "put your head in there" type of tricks. The longest to learn has been the walking handstand. The impossible to learn is shy/cover your face. We still can't get it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am looking at all these lists and going 'well, my dog fetched a ball for the first time ever today, though we had to go back to stage 1 of training because it wasn't a stick and that means it is unfetchable apparently. Does that count?'

 

Any lists of tricks for 'slow dogs and slow trainers 101'? She likes 'stay' and 'paw' and anything that involves flailing or bouncing. And not having to listen to what's being said because if you have food, listening is impossible in the excitement. Just run through all your tricks 'til you get to the correct one.

 

The other dog, it's like 'Yep, I will fetch the rubbish while we're out on a walk and go deposit it in the bin, and then look extremely smug.' So mostly things to do with retrieving, retrieving different objects, finding hidden objects, stuff like that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The impossible to learn is shy/cover your face. We still can't get it.

 

We tried this for awhile, but couldn't do it either; some people suggested using a sticky note on the side of their face. That didn't work. Another suggestion was loop something loosely around their snout so they paw it off. That didn't work either.. Eventually, I figured out that he would paw his face if I got him to lie down, and gently stimulate it. We initially tried itching it, but that caused him to sneeze too much, so I tried gently blowing on his nose, and that did the trick for us.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We tried this for awhile, but couldn't do it either; some people suggested using a sticky note on the side of their face. That didn't work. Another suggestion was loop something loosely around their snout so they paw it off. That didn't work either.. Eventually, I figured out that he would paw his face if I got him to lie down, and gently stimulate it. We initially tried itching it, but that caused him to sneeze too much, so I tried gently blowing on his nose, and that did the trick for us.

 

Oh, man, I tried this for so long and Kieran would flick the tape off before I could even click, haha. So then I tried using stickier tape. He just ended up with a bunch of tape on the bottom of his paw.

 

Off the top of my head, Kieran knows shake, wave, stand (on hind legs), high five, spin left and right, go get it, touch, roll over, play dead, taiko drums (a sit pretty where he pretends to be hitting a drum with his front paws), jump, crawl, grumble, "I love you," and I'm probably forgetting a bunch. I told my sister I need to write a list because when people ask I go, "uh, ah, sit...uh..."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Tio can do quite a number of tricks...

 

bang, your dead

leg weaving

touch whatever you point to

pray

jump on my back, on my knee, in my arms

spins

roll over both ways

bark on command

heel work

etc..etc...

pretty good for gimpy hind ended guy...

 

However, since Juno (AKA the devil's spawn) arrived in January all that has gone out the window. Once he settles down a bit I'll get them back into some trick training.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I had the same reaction to this thread as Simba! Juno is a great dog and can do a few tricks if she is in the mood. My favorite is Cross Your Paws. Juno loves to cross her paws and strangers are very impressed when she does it but our repertoire is still quite small compared to some of the others mentioned. Right now we are working on the Sue Ailsbury training levels and there are a few tricks involved but that is all we can manage so far. I think as her attention span increases we will be able to do more.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In order to save my sanity, I'm just sticking with Molly.

 

Removing all the obedience and agility related things and staying with things I consider tricks

Spin

Twirl

Roll over

Touch

Paw

Other paw

Leg weaves (walking and stationary)

Walking backwards

Walking between my legs (I hate their feet on mine) forward, backward, and turning.

Beg

Stand (hind legs)

Dance (spin on hind legs)

Jumping into my arms.

Rebound (I know she's too young for that, but she was doing it and I didn't want to kill it entirely so I put it on a cue)

Close it! (Anything that pushes closed)

and "Throw it away" which she took from my GSD mix, where I hand her things and she puts it in the trash.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Logan does a few tricks, leg weave forward and backward, spin, twirl. But, years ago I decided to teach him to pull a tissue out of the tissue box and give it to me when I (fake) sneeze. All was going well, I patiently taught him to pull out one tissue and retrieve it to me. Then I added the fake sneeze. For some reason the darn tissue fell into the box where he couldn't reach it. It annoyed Logan to no end. He tried and tried to get that tissue out, then grabbed the whole box in his mouth and flung it at me. Of course I laughed and that was the end of that. He loves it when people laugh and I could never get him to retrieve a single tissue again. He just clobbers me with the box when I fake sneeze. Oh well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh, and the most 'impressive' (to other people) trick is Kylie's. We can tell her 'take it to dad (or mom)' and she'll grab whatever small thing and deliver it to the other person. Mostly, it's the car keys and no great distances, but we've used it for sunglasses and prescription bottles and assorted other small things we're too lazy to deliver ourselves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Torque can do quite a few of the tricks already mentioned, but I will just mention three.

 

Get Set - which means come and sit between my legs. (I am standing up.) I started this when I wanted to position him at the start line for agility. Now, when I walk in to the ring, he positions perfectly wherever I want him when I tell him to 'Get Set'. And sometimes, he is so excited that he insists on walking between my legs while I walk into the ring.

 

Bang - fall over dead on his left side - although he will keep his eyes open. I have considered teaching him a different command to fall over dead on his right side, but haven't yet taken the time.

 

This last one took a LOOONNGGG time to teach because Torque's default behavior is to do everything as fast as possible. (For example, he throws dirt clods when he weaves between my legs because he is digging into the grass so hard.) I wanted a trick where he would have to concentrate and slow down. I bought a plastic child's toy that has 5 rings with the bottom ring the largest and the other 4 are progressively smaller. They stack on a plastic 'stick' - approx. 7-8 inches high and one inch in diameter. I will throw the largest one on the ground, point at it and say 'get it'. He will pick it up and very consciously and (sort of) gently place it on the stick. He has to position the hole of the ring over the stick so that it slides to the bottom. I then throw the next smaller ring on the ground, and he repeats. Rinse and repeat. When I started training this trick, he would run and get the ring and return it to me, but then would either throw it at me or throw it on the ground and paw it. It took forever to get him to understand that he needed to slow down and place the ring in a specific place rather than just throwing it wherever he wanted.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Teresaserrano- my terrier will not let one kid hog the ball under any circumstances. She insists on fetching alternately to everyone willing to throw it, even if siblings are fighting over who gets it etc. They seem to accept the dog's judgment on whose turn it is much easier than they accept mine or their parents', even when she makes mistakes.

 

 

I tried to make sure once that she brought the ball back only to the child who wasn't afraid of dogs.

 

This went on for a couple of throws until she dropped it at the other child's feet and refused to continue unless he threw the ball. Funny animals.

 

Edit: Oh, I made the mistake one day when bored of trying to teach the dog to find my phone when it rang. She got the idea quickly enough, and then decided of her own accord she should also fetch it. Could not persuade her otherwise. So that had to get untrained quickly.

 

She still occasionally grabs the phone when it rings when it's charging, and tries to pull it out of the wall by sheer force. At least I can recommend you a trick not to train, GoodbyeHalcyonDays?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, Tess often decides to whom she wants to give the ball and won't give up till it's thrown. And she likes to rotate between the people present - you know, I'm with friends, we're playing with her, and there's always one person that really prefers to sit down, sip a beer and ignore the dog? Well, not for long...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My husband has taught all 3 of ours what he calls "emergency situation preparation"

 

When he asks them "What would you do if the house was on fire?" they all 3 sit down, then lie down and then roll over.

So they know the stop, drop, and roll technique.

 

My husband's hunting lab immediately cheats and just rolls over when he hears the word "what", which can be quite funny during regular conversations.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 years later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Runa and I had fun leaning some musical freestyle moves.  I found this list and we got up to 35 of the moves.  There are four pages of skills, listing  "Skill, Difficulty, Description, Voice Cue,and Body Cue", which I found very helpful.  Also found Runa is a much better dancer than me.

Canine freestyle skills

https://static.squarespace.com/static/508410f5e4b02e0cbd1db649/t/53556b5fe4b0240356d2d7bb/1398106975058/Freestyle+Moves.pdf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...