Day 10: Unwrapping Time!
This idea is a little similar to some others I’ve included, but as always it can be taken in a hundred directions depending on your dog or pet.
For example, Journey loves to hold little strings in his front teeth, so getting him to hold this ribbon wasn’t much of an issue at all…
But another dog might want to SHRED some paper! So, let them!
Think of all the ways you could show your dog opening or unwrapping presents. Even snuffling inside boxes with torn paper will tell this story too.
Let's Talk Tricks!
As a photographer, teacher AND dog trainer, a big part of what I do – at least with my own boys – is making sure we live together in harmony, that they know and are well-paid for their job (modelling!) and that I keep them mentally active through training, fitness, and doing tricks.
For my boys to be able to model while I’m filming or taking photos for lessons for my Learning Journey, the most useful commands for us are Stay (of course), a rock-solid recall (they’re usually off-leash!), a “Stop”/freeze where you are, back-up (to move backwards into position), “Go hop up!” to get on a stump or log, and of course “Sleep”/Chin down.
I love dog training so much that we have a whole section dedicated to tricks and dog behaviour in the Learning Journey, from talking about rewards and reward values, working with distracted dogs, guest speakers talking about reactive, fearful or overly excited dogs, to full trick-training and stay-training video lessons!
After all, we can’t expect our dogs to be amazing models if they don’t know HOW to be, right?! And they’ll only know how to be amazing models if WE teach them!
