Teach Your Dog…

Quigley doing "Show me belly"

Quigley doing “Show me belly”

“Show me belly” is one of my favorite Quigley tricks!  He so cute!  We have been working on saying grace before he eats and he’s doing well.

But that’s just fun stuff. What I really want is for him to learn to go to a place in the living room when someone knocks on the door and to lie down there and stay. As opposed to jumping all around and on the hapless guest who enters. He weighs almost 90 pounds so having him jump on people in exuberant abandon is not a pleasant experience.

So we’ve been working on it,  It’s not coming easily, especially not getting him to go to the particular spot I wished him to go to. Remembering there is a “trick” called “going to a mark” I searched the internet and came up with the following video by Zac George:  How To Teach Your Dog to Go to a Spot.

Zac’s very enthusiastic and his dog is very quick and attentive and energetic — one of those cattle herding dogs that are smart and bred to work well with people, making frequent eye contact– as opposed to hurling themselves headlong into the woods and across the hills on a scent trail,  bellowing all the while like hounds were bred to do. (They actually have a contest of who can jump up on the tree and bark the most at coonhound field trials. Quigley has potential to do quite well in that one…)

But I digress…  Quig did pretty well with the touch the towel thing that’s taught in the video and we’re moving along on the touch it and lie down part. I thought the video was so entertaining, some of you dog lovers might enjoy it as well…

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