At one point I tried to get him to do three trips before getting a treat and he got annoyed and started putting stuff back in the basket and honestly, I'm impressed. Civil disobedience is a big concept for him.
(Just kidding - we've been practicing tidying up toys into a basket recently so when he didn't get rewarded after the second attempt, I think he got confused and tried something else. Oops!)
If y'all will allow me a moment to brag, Minty taught herself the most adorable trick. As a puppy I thought I would teach her shake and so I started by holding out my hand palm up, just to see what she'd do.
She looked at my hand, thinking, glanced at me, thinking, gears turning and turning in her tiny furry head, staring at my hand... then suddenly a lightbulb! She laid her head in my hand, looked up at me expectantly and wagged her little tail.
Well, was I supposed to tell her that, no, that was wrong? That that wasn't adorable and definitely deserving of praise and pets? Her chin was right there for the scritching!
I have since taught her to first bump as a variant of shake, and she's a champ at wait, but that one is still my favourite.
I'm teaching Mav to cross his front paws as a cute trick to photograph. He's very enthusiastic but still tries to nose-punch me a lot!
(At this point I'm looking for Mav to touch the back of my hand with his right paw. Any effort is rewarded so he doesn't get discouraged, but extra rewards for doing it in a way that crosses his right paw over his left)
Teaching him to pick up his lead and give it to me. We started learning this at tricks class last night and this is a bit of work on it in the shop when it was quiet today. He’s got the idea quite quickly :)
Recently I taught Milo to find my phone for me and I ask him to do it quite often, because he really enjoys it and I am constantly forgetting where I put my phone down. It's gotten to the stage where I can ask my husband if he's seen my phone and Milo will jump into action.
This morning said husband was looking for his wallet and Milo was like, oh you've lost something? This seems like a job for me! And started frantically searching. But obviously he had no idea what he was searching for so he just came and rested his head on my phone. While it was in my hand, being used. (':
I'm gonna have to find some more find/retrieve tasks for him to do because he enjoys them so much. Maybe fetching my meds when my alarm goes off might actually make me take them consistently.