This post is dedicated to my blog friend, Moose the Labradane, who lives in a faraway place called Florida! 
A while back, my friend Moose played a really cool game with his human on her wheelie chair. It looked such fun that I wanted to try it with my human too!
Except that I don’t think I quite -- er, ‘got it’…hmm, Hsin-Yi says she was pulling me more than I was pulling her!
Well, you can see for yourselves 
:
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Moose also asked me a while back to post some instructions for how I learnt my ‘Paws Up’ trick.
Well, this is actually the first part of the trick “Say Your Prayers” -- but I haven’t learnt the last part yet where I put my head down. (Hsin-Yi is a bit of a moody trainer so we do trainings only when she feels like it and sometimes, I start to learn a trick and then don’t come back to it for months! At the moment, I am halfway through at least 4 different tricks! )
Lots of doggies usually learn this trick first on their human’s arm but I’m quite heavy (hee! hee!) so it’s hard for Hsin-Yi to prop me up with her arm -- so she decided to just teach me on a chair first. We think it is actually easier to teach anyway starting with a chair or low table or even stool, if you are an extra small doggie.
Also, it is important that us doggies are sitting first -- not standing -- otherwise it will look like a different trick.
OK, so for the first part, this is how I learnt it:
(by Hsin-Yi)
1) First encourage your dog to paw the chair -- some dogs are naturally “paw-y” dogs and will use their paws to interact with anything (Honey is one of these!) so just indicating the chair will get them to paw it. As you will see in the video below, she has also already been taught another command called “Hit it!” which is to touch something (target) with her paw -- so I used that to start with. CLICK & treat (or use your marker word) as soon as you see their paw make contact with the chair. Doesn’t matter at this stage if they immediately take it off again.
* If your dog won’t paw the chair, try to elicit the action: if your dog knows “Shake”, offering your own hand to them can get them to at least lift their paw up first (you see me do this in the video). Click & reward even just a small lift of their paw at first. Remember, baby steps.
* If they don’t know Shake, you can try showing them a treat and then hiding it under your hand, on the chair. Your dog will try to get the treat from under your hand and often, if they can’t nibble it out with their mouths, will try using their paws…so be ready to mark them the instant they put their paws up to your hand.
2) If you keep marking & rewarding every time your dog’s paw makes contact with the chair, they will quickly work out that THAT is the action you want and they will start to offer it voluntarily. When they are doing this confidently, start to wait until they keep the paw on the chair for longer before giving them the CLICK (or marker word).
3) Once they can do that confidently with one paw, start to withhold the CLICK and try to get their other paw up as well. Again, baby steps. With Honey (especially because she has such long legs), I didn’t expect her to immediately lift both paws up in one go -- I clicked first just for lifting her weight off the other leg, even sightly. This helps her understand what I want -- and makes it easier for her to eventually put her other paw up on the chair as well. (Clicker training is all about constantly encouraging the dog by rewarding small steps to give him confidence to keep trying).
4) Again, once they are putting both paws happily on the chair, start to wait a couple of seconds longer each time before giving the CLICK, so that they learn to keep their paws up there.
5) At this stage, you can also start to introduce the cue/command (we use “Paws Up!”) just before the dog does the action and you can also start to phase out the CLICK/marker and just reward with praise and treats.
Here is a short video clip of Honey learning this trick at doggie dancing camp back in Jan. She happened to pick this one up very quickly because she is a “paw-y” dog and she learns any tricks involving her paws very quickly (and she already knew how to target things with her paws). So don’t worry if your dog is slower. Be patient and if they are really not getting it, break it down into even smaller steps & reward for even a slight approximation of the behaviour.
(*If your dog stands up when they put both paws on the chair, just patiently ask them to Sit and try again -- they will eventually learn that they need to remain sitting, while putting their paws up.)
Once your dog has mastered this part of the trick, you can go on to teach them to bow their head down between their paws, in the classic “Say Your Prayers” pose, which looks very cute. I haven’t taught this to Honey yet and am not sure if I will as she has such long legs and deep chest, it may be uncomfortable for her to hunch over like that (it’s a bit of a feat for her to prop herself up like that as it is!) -- but most other dogs who are not giant breeds should be able to do it no problem.
Instead, however, I have extended our Paws Up trick to her doing it on my arm -- which is a more useful move for dancing anyway. Remember, you can always modify tricks to suit your own dog.
For those of you who want to go on to teach the final ”Say Your Prayers” part of the trick, here is a great video from my friend Pamela Marxsen who is a trainer in San Diego (http://www.pamsdogacademy.com/):
And here is another great video of the same trick by another trainer, which you may also find useful:
Happy Training!
******
OK -- before I go, I wanted to show you a scary thing my human saw in the supermarket yesterday…is that me and my blog friend, Mango the Mastiff, squished into tubs?? 
Eeeeeeek!!!
* AAAaaaarrrggh! We have just found out that we have exceeded our internet allowance for this month and have been dropped to dial-up speeds! I’ve been trying to do Google Reader but it is absolute torture - takes 10mins to load a blog page and then I can’t see any of the photos ‘coz it takes another 10mins to load them! Plus we’ve got friends arriving from overseas later in the week so will be very busy…Our broadband should be restored early next week hopefully -- so hopefully we’ll be able to catch up with everyone then. So please excuse our absence this week! ~ Hsin-Yi
)
By the way, Paul did help put the crate in the car the night before – actually, it was so big that my humans had to spend a lot of time pushing & shoving and huffing & puffing, trying to get it in!
