Not funny.

No I was not sick. It’s Mum thinking it’s funny – at my expense.

Mum had another spurt of energy to get me to do things for another point towards the Expert Trick Dog title.

This one is following commands at a distance. Mum has to be 12 ft away to give the commands.

We did a sequence of tricks …

Mum wanted me to do the ‘Cross My Paws’ but I kept tucking in a paw whenever I went down. Thus, we had to do that separately.

The sixth command was ‘PERCH’ which required putting two paws up on an object. Half way through training Mum decided she didn’t like saying that word loudly so she changed it to “PAWS UP” which completely confused me. I kept hearing ‘UP’ – a command I know well, so I started jumping onto the objects instead and never got treated for doing so. I was confused. Never change commands in the middle of training, Mum!

So she quickly went back to “PERCH” …

And then she wanted to write a blog about all that we had done and thought everything was pretty obvious and seen before. So she thought it would be funny for me to perch on the toilet seat.

Willingly, I obliged …

May’s comment: I had a free Saturday and Sunday! And since we learnt crossing paws, we had six commands to try the next requirement to get a point.

First we needed to prove that we are 12ft apart before we started any tricks.

That’s why Darcy looks so small in the videos!

Even though these are all tricks that Darcy knows, the challenge of getting her to do them from a distance wasn’t the same. I had taught her the tricks up close and she had me next to her, giving her the confidence.

Teaching Darcy new tricks that involved the two of us where I can guide her is a lot faster for her to grasp. But to stay at a distance and telling her what to do involved precision in both my hand signals and verbal commands. Someone had observed that she is very sensitive and therefore I needed to be precise on in my directions – both physical and verbal.

A perfect example was the word ‘perch‘ – a command where she puts her two front paws on an object. After having used it for several months in teaching her to perch in a frenzy – whenever I showed her a treat that she wanted, she easily did it – from object to object around the living room. No hesitation.

I decided to switch the command to ‘paws up‘ – without realising that she understands the word ‘up‘ to be one for jumping onto a step, a bench, anything – usually for a photo op.

Poor Darcy. She thought she was doing what I wanted her to do but I wasn’t treating her in return. It also made me realise that with consistent practice, all these commands will be second nature to her.

Back to the latest qualification for another point towards Expert Title, she needed to show that she can follow a command from afar at a minimum of 12 feet to be exact with any six commands.

We did a sequence of the first four:

• SIT (basic – used hand cues or command)
• SAY PLEASE / SIT PRETTY (this she needed hand cues)
• WAVE (both hand cues and command)
• DOWN (command and hand cues)

She ended it with a COME (which was super easy and didn’t use it towards the six)

I would have added CROSS YOUR PAWS to the sequence except she tended to tuck one paw under and therefore could not do the trick. This one involved a voice command and crossing my feet.

The last one was PERCH – and then I had fun with it. We have enjoyed doing tricks and focused on getting points but we also wanted a little humour along the way.

She’s been ever so long-suffering. One more trick to learn to gain the next level and then I think it will be George’s turn.