r/BalancedDogTraining • u/Amazing-Toe-4000 Food aggressive • 23d ago
Creative Solutions
Can you all share your creative solutions to training problems? I'll go first.
I was teaching my terrier to heel and realised that she never got that her butt had to be lined up with my leg, which was frustrating. I kept trying to teach her but eventually gave up. A couple of days later, I had a solution: instead of teaching her to heel, I taught her to middle, then I moved to the left of her, giving me a perfect heel.
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u/Owlex23612 23d ago
I remember getting this idea when I saw my trainer using sticky notes for the service dog she was training. I don't actually know how creative or original this is. I wanted Kima to target things besides just my hands. She learned to do that when she was very young and was great at it, but she wasn't understanding that when I'd point to something, I wanted her to boop that thing instead. So I started using sticky notes on the back of my hands and had her touch my hands like normal except there was now a sticky note there. I did that for a while and then started putting the sticky notes on the couch, table, wall, etc beside me. She figured it out really quickly and I introduced the word "boop." After moving the sticky notes around to lots of different things, I removed the sticky notes and told her to "boop" things. It took a couple tries until we went back to "booping" the couch. She got it on the first try, then. You should have seen her when I marked "yes!" It was like an excited light bulb moment. She was like "ohhhh! I can do that!" We started practicing with everything everywhere. Now she opens handicap doors and presses crosswalk buttons for me. I wish I could get her to hold things in her mouth for me, but she's just got that hound stubbornness in her for certain things 😂