When Pigs Fly_ Training Success With Impossible Dogs - Jane Killion [43]
Nobody likes a bore. Let your dog win sometimes.
Play With Your Food
Games for the Chow Hound
Food can become a game, depending on how you dispense it. Just placing a treat in your dog’s mouth is one thing, but tossing it to the side with a quick motion is more fun. Treats that are easily visible and roll and bounce as they are thrown, like cheese balls, can create excitement very quickly. If your dog does not immediately bound off after the treat, run over and pick it up yourself. Show Fido what he missed, and quickly throw it again. Repeat over and over. It will not take him long to figure out that he has to race to get the treat. This is a great game for transforming the most stoic couch potato into a lively playmate.
Another way of enticing dogs to play with food is to use toys that contain food, like the Tug-N-Treat or the stuffed bait bag we talked about in the tugging section. You can also use a treat that actually is food, like a bully stick—a foot-long piece of rolled rawhide (dried bull penis—I kid you not). Vary the presentation of your reinforcement. Let your dog smell it (but not taste it), put his mouth on it, see it, chase after you after you let him smell it, chew it while you hold it, chew it on his own for a while, chase it after you throw it. That one toy can become a dozen different reinforcements, depending on how you present it.
Even a dull scrap of bread is an exciting reinforcer if you make a game of it.
The way you deliver a treat makes the difference between a ho-hum reinforcer and one that makes your dog vibrate with excitement. Cheese balls are OK to eat, but FANTASTIC to chase down.
Naked Games
Graduate School
Your ultimate goal is to have a repertoire of fun things you can do with your dog to get him excited that do not require toys or food. Dog trainer Brenda Buja calls these “naked games.” If your dog has a strong love for naked games, you can get his attention any time, any where without the need for “props.” Most naked games start out as cold, or, at best, lukewarm activities. By practice and reinforcement, they become hot activities. I call them “graduate” activities, because it takes a long time and a strong relationship for naked games to become fun for your dog. For some dogs, naked games come rather naturally, but for most dogs a substantial history of reinforcement is necessary before your dog will come to love naked games in their own right. Here are some examples of great naked games:
1. Jumping up for a hand touch.
2. Side to side hand touches.
3. Speak—just click when your dog barks, then put it on cue.
4. Jumping up on the handler.
5. Shoving dog on the chest.
6. Toe pinches—make pinching motions with your fingers as you stalk your dog and gently pinch his feet. Eventually, just the pinching motion will be enough to rev your dog up.
7. Loud smooches or backwards kisses. If your dog’s size permits, lift him off of the ground while smooching.
8. Jump from side to side, keeping your body low.
9. Running around like a lunatic.
10. Clapping.
11. Spinning.
12. Play bowing.
Jumping up for a hand touch is a game that many dogs very quickly learn to love.
Training a dog to jump up on cue is an especially delightful game where dogs finally get to do the thing they naturally want to do.
Please, be sensible and safe about the naked games you play. If you are training a soft-tempered little Italian Greyhound, don’t shove him around—gentle clapping while facing slightly away from him is enough. If you are training a bold Newfoundland, you can go ahead and push on him with both hands. A well socialized and friendly dog that you have raised from puppyhood may love bold games, like loud smooches, shoving, and having air blown in his face, and anyone might be perfectly safe to do those things with him. On the other hand, if you have just adopted a rescue dog and he is a little shy and you don’t