Fun & Handy Tricks

This is a fun exercise that is handier than it seems at first. You'll set up two targets at a distance, and teach your dog to go to either target—left or right—on cue. Later, you will set up similar exercises to bring more general meaning to the cues "left" or "right."

A dog that understands "left" and "right" has a terrific skill for many competition venues including agility, herding, mushing, water dog, and retrieving. This understanding would also be handy walking on trails—and service dog owners could think of a dozen or more applications for "left" and "right."

Would you believe that your dog is capable of following a track left by a person and then finding that person at the end of the track—and that you can teach this skill without any extra training in the time it takes to feed him his normal daily meal?

101 Things to do with a Box: A Good Exercise for an Older, Suspicious, or Previously Trained Dog

This training game is derived from a dolphin research project in which I and others participated, "The creative porpoise: training for novel behavior," published in the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior in 1969. It has become a favorite with dog trainers. It's especially good for "crossover" dogs with a long history of correction-based training, since it encourages mental and physical flexibility and gives the dog courage to try something on its own.

Waltham, MA, September 30, 2008—American Idol meets Animal Planet! Karen Pryor Clickertraining (KPCT) is proud to announce a worldwide showcase for videos that demonstrate great animal training: the Canis Film Festival, where animals and their trainers are the newly discovered stars.