So, since Jeff has promoted this blog to family and friends with the promise of animals as one of the topics, I guess I should cover that some more. With a new dog in the house, you can imagine that there’s some dog training to do. I’ve never trained a dog before, though Jeff’s mom has in fact taught obedience classes, and I’ve picked up a few tidbits from her.
One of those tidbits is the “hand game”. You put a treat in each palm, close to a fist, and hold both down in front of you for the dog to sniff at. When the dog stops sniffing and sits back on its haunches, you give it the treat from the hand at which it was not most recently nosing (with a reward cue like “yes” when they sit back, which is the desired behavior).
I was trying to work with Lily on a different command the other day, luring her through it, and she just kept jumping for the treat. Which is when the little lightbulb flashed on in an “aha” moment: that is when you play the hand game! I very pleased to have figured this out – and even more pleased when I related my conclusions to Jeff’s mother and I got a reward cue (“yes!”) of my own.
