Ohiofarmgirl'sAdventuresinTheGoodLand-where ya been? whatcha been doin

Javamama

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java - you said it! i love when you are in a mood! whooot!
I'm glad somebody does :p My family is giving me a wide berth this week. Is something going on with the moon again? :D

My goats ate the palm fronds. Sorry. You may have to find something that isn't green to fan them with.
 

aggieterpkatie

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I missed the meanie's post on BYH...was it anything out of the ordinary or just the usual rudeness?


And OFG, the convo you had w/ your MIL also reminded me, dogs can follow our line of sight too!! Dogs are the best. :love
 

ohiofarmgirl

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a new low, AP... but its gone now. whew!

and you are just right. i couldnt do half this work without the dogs. i wish i could whistle... but cant
:-(

i've been teaching my guys to follow my eyes.. but i have glasses so gestures work better. but we have a command, "look at me" that we use all the time

:)
 

Dace

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Ok, how do you teach dogs to follow your eyes?

I can snap my fingers and point to the other side of the room and Little Fatty will go over there and lay down. That is about the extent of his training. Although I am lucky that he is naturally a well behaved little guy.

I want to train him to do something interesting. No chickens, no goats...can he learn how to bake a pumpkin pie if I point to the kitchen?

He is handsome though
Dace156.jpg
 

FarmerDenise

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Dace, that is a handsome feller!

I don't go over to BYH very often, because it is too hard to get the common sense info that I am looking for. I am willing to stir the pot a bit every once in a while ;)

I am thinking about baking some cookies too, but we are having another heatwave day, so I might just do something that involves water and outdoors....
 

aggieterpkatie

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Cute Sheltie, Dace!

I was watching a special on dogs (can't remeber the name now) and they showed a person sitting in front of 3 cups, overturned. Under one cup was a treat. The dog was sitting across the room facing the human, and the human would look at the cup that had the treat. The dog was able to follow the human's eyes to the correct cup! It was a cool show.
 

Dace

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aggieterpkatie said:
Cute Sheltie, Dace!

I was watching a special on dogs (can't remeber the name now) and they showed a person sitting in front of 3 cups, overturned. Under one cup was a treat. The dog was sitting across the room facing the human, and the human would look at the cup that had the treat. The dog was able to follow the human's eyes to the correct cup! It was a cool show.
I am soooooooo gonna try that!
 

ohiofarmgirl

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hey D! wow THATS fattie!?!? hee hee hee... how about "Lovely" hee hee hee he's a looker for sure!

so SavingDogs said my training method is "progression" which means we start with something easy and then add to it. our #1 Dog is wicked smart - i know everyone says that - but he really is so he's super duper easy to work with.

the first thing i had to do was teach him to look AT me - for most dogs, in most circumstances, looking you in the eye is a challenge. so we have a command "look at me" - this works for lots of stuff and i came up with it mostly b/c i cant whistle. i came up with it to adjust/make changes to the commands i give them when they are working.

so if they are out there chasing the wrong rooster i can yell "look at me" and then point to the right one. when i do this i also make an exaggerated look with my eyes/face so they can see me looking at the correct rooster.

gradually i'll drop the hand gesture and nod with my head and exaggerate my look in the correct direction.

then just exaggerate my look...

then just look.

its easy peasy b/c dogs interpret your body language on a way that you dont even know about. think of that show "lie to me" and he talks about micro expressions? thats what your dogs sees as easily as if you were saving a big flag.

for instance i could never figure out how they knew i was getting up to go outside with them.. but then i realized i would take a breath in before i stood up.. they took the breath - not the 'stand up' as the signal that it was time to go out and work.

can you believe it? them dogs are smarty pantz alright....

while i'm braggin on them dogs... someone asked me what the dogs would do if someone was tickling me or i was rough housing?

um.. honestly if i was laughing and being fun i dont think they would be alarmed. and really the only one who can tickle me is my husband and as far as the dogs know he "owns" me so they woudlnt care.

but i did have a couple times when i've been nervous around someone and Dog#1 totally gets in front of me (he stand perpendicular to me at high alert) and even if i dont say or do anything he'll be more aggressive with the weirdos.

i had an incident where a delivery guy (who was a weirdo) showed up. i put the dogs behind the fence and they were barking...and since he was a weirdo i just let them.

so he says to me, nervously, "is that fence going to hold them dogs?"
me: nope. but they know to stay behind it.
he: oh.. how do you know they will ?
me: well. because i ain't screamin' yet, friend.

he finished up the delivery fast and drove away faster.

and dang. our ups guy hates our house
;-)
 

savingdogs

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Shelties can be really nice dogs. I've known some really special ones.

Playing dead is always cuter if you say "bang!" as the command instead of "play dead" and instead of saying "okay" when they can come back to life, blow on your finger like you were blowing on the end of a smoking gun as the "get up" command. We won a dog trick contest with that one, with plain old playing dead. Our dog gets really into the drama of it. We just can't get her to stop wagging the tip of her tail, but people always seem to love that part of the performance, too. Then when you let the dog up, say the words Ta Dah! like a circus performer, and have the dog kneel, like they are bowing. It gets a laugh every time and all of that is super easy to teach a dog. Sometimes if you choose a cute word for the command it makes your trick funnier.

Did anyone see the guy who trained the trick horse on that Animal stars show? That was too cute. But a lot of it was simple things he made the horse do after he said something funny.
 

Dace

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Wow you guys have some great info!

OFG I love the way you've trained your dogs... Are there any training books that you would recommend? I would really love to do some fun stuff with Teddy ( as in bear, which he looked like as a pup)
 
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