Trick 3 and Daily Shoot

Dog Blog Post #206: This week's trick is:

Paws-up

Here's another shaped trick, which turned out to be harder for little sit-n-stare than I would have thought! The idea is simple enough - dog puts front paws on a raised object. I taught this one to Zachary in a few minutes while doing meet-n-greets in front of the library. I used luring in that case, putting the object between him and me, holding a cookie in front of me, and encouraging him to come get it.

Presto!

It was a no brainer.

This time, lacking an object solidly bolted into the ground, I switched to shaping and an upside-down basket. Little sit-n-stare immediately lived up to his nick-name, and sat. And stared. And stared. And sat.

(Yes, it was just as boring as it sounds. He was convinced we were playing "Watch", and that basket between us was irrelevant to the exercise.)

Hmm.... so I started tossing cookies on either side of the basket, to get his little velcro butt off the ground. Worked great. Sort of. He would happily go around the basket and jump over the basket, sniff the basket, nose the basket, etc., but there was no way on God's green Earth that his paw was going to actually touch that basket.

Ever.

I even tried dropping cookies on the bottom of the basket. Happy day! He snarfed them up eagerly, but the paws remained firmly on the ground.

Thus ended day one. And it was not so good.

Day Two - I flipped the basket over to see if I could get paws in the basket. Hit myself on the head for my stupidity at not picking that trick, as he happily put one, and then the other in. Still using shaping, mind you. A click at a time. A click for his head in the basket. A click for a paw raised. A click for a paw in the basket. A click for two in the basket, a jackpot, and thus ended two. And it was a lot better.

Day Three - flipped basket over again, so now it was bottom-side up again. What do you know, little sit-and-stare immediately started putting a paw on the bottom. Yeah!!!

And the rest was easy (as the first should have been!)

As for Zachary, since he already knew this trick, I shaped him to do a lovely heads-up look (away from the cookies) instead of the Vulture Stance you see in little sit-n-stare above. Took about 2 minutes. It was really good!

And finally, The Daily Shoot:

Make a photograph with a soft look today.


Yeah, I know. I gimme if there ever was one.

So first I went for the Studio Look...

... once again, set up in the dining room. While I don't like the lighting, I defy any to tell me it doesn't look soft!

But it just wasn't what I was looking for. Then I saw the sunlight peaking in through the front window, and remembered how nice those have pictures have come out in past.

Grabbing my camera and a dog, I got this:

And finally, at son's request, we have "Henry Fur":

(Zachary's doesn't do soft so much as silky!)