I hope everyone is having a great Memorial day weekend.
The dogs and I have all been working hard on completing our assignments for the Sylvia Trkman Puppy 2 class. For awhile it seemed we were hopelessly behind but all of a sudden we are almost caught up. One of the tricks we were assigned is closing doors and drawers-a good prep for teeter work. This was one of the EASIEST tricks we have done. We just started with a paw touch to a rubber spatula, then held the spatula to the door once the paw touch was really strong. A few times of touching their paw to the door and closing it-all three dogs had got the idea. It is the only trick I can think of that was easy for all three of the dogs, usually a trick may easy for one or two dogs...but will be difficult for the other dog ;-).
We were also assigned doing tricks in new places. It is always fun to combine assignments and this gave us the chance to see if the dogs were generalizing the task to all sorts of drawers and doors different then the ones at home, and it gave us a chance to work with different distractions. The home center employees are always great to my dogs and did not have a problem with letting the dogs close the cabinets.