Trick Training-Not really a primer.

I was going to tell you I trained Gustavo to do this great new trick!


Called go through my camouflage tote, open up all the pockets, and extract money out of the smallest one and eat the money!

It was going to be a highly shaped trick, with a lot of backchaining to get the sequence just right.

But that would be wrong. The work of the diablo. I would be telling a lie. He just does stuff like that and if you happen to have good ears, you can hear the sound of your MONEY BEING SHREDDED from the other room and go save it quick. Hey, I am saving money!


But I sort of realized this might be the key to his more effective training. It is The Secret! These are the little things I should be shaping, right? So I can eventually have this cool command like Go and Make Our Nation's Recession Worse! and he runs over and does that right when I say. The old folks would love that one! I am sure is a useful application for agility at a later date.

Great dog trick!

If I do it just right, I can get the 3 small dogs (this trick doesn't work for Timmy because he is deaf as a stapler) to start howling all together. This is a very popular trick with my neighbors and husband I am sure. Because they don't exactly howl like, you were probably just picturing, dog howling. Like coyote or a husky. No. Not team small dog. Otterpop starts, with her kind of whiney, sing-a-long voice. Gustavo is next, with a shrill, sputtering monkey sound mostly heard in dark rainforest jungles where you also find giant snakes. Ruby finishes it off, with an even higher, shriller, shrieking ear splitting harmony, perhaps the sound of a tortured baby. When you get all 3 going together, being little ego hogs, they raise the volume, and the overall effect is somewhere between horrific and chilling, like a drunken, off key singer is murdering babies and monkeys deep in the jungle and there is no way out. Great Trick!