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I started to teach my mutt the commands “crawl” and “go long” this week. Noticed I said started teaching him these things. While teaching my mutt, I have learned it is best to teach in very, very basic steps. By breaking the training into the simplest steps possible, my mutt begins to understand.
I am teaching Ace to crawl by starting with him in the down position. A good time to practice “crawl” is in the evenings when he is tired or lazy and would actually prefer to crawl when I call him. I sit on the floor a foot or so in front of him with a treat and move my hand on the ground from his nose to me and say “crawl.” I encourage him to crawl forward. If he lifts his back, I am close enough to push it back down. In the video Ace is crawling on the kitchen floor, but carpet is easier on his elbows and not so slippery.
The mutt does pretty well so far, considering he only has to crawl about a foot. I am not sure if he actually knows the crawl command or if he just thinks crawling is the quickest way to get to me and the food since it’s right in front of him. He will not crawl across the room on command yet; we are nowhere near that point (as you can see in the video).
We have started to work on the “go long” command where the idea is for Ace to run several yards ahead of me to anticipate a long pass. I have not had a lot of success with this yet, because he is so focused on the ball he does not want to be more than a few feet from me.
The only time Ace does “go long” is during the first one or two throws of a fetch session when he is so excited and full of energy that he runs to get the ball before I throw it. I am trying to build on this by only practicing “go long” in short sessions so Ace can be successful.
Today is day 10 of my 30-day challenge to teach Ace five new commands: Bucket, go long, crawl, roll over and bang. We haven’t started on roll over yet. We better get going! Click here to see my other 30-day challenge posts.
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July 10th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Cute! Looks like he’s coming along! You certainly keep him enriched.
Apryl DeLancey’s last blog post..Someone Call A Toe Truck