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Teach an old dog new tricks? Easy!
By Liz Palika
August 26, 2010
Since the theme of the day is myth-busting, here’s one I’d like to bust forever: You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
At Kindred Spirits we often have people call in and ask if older dogs can be taught new things, and unless the dog has some health or mental issues (such as a geriatric cognitive disorder or dementia), I always say yes. Because older dogs can learn.
In the photo, Melissa is working with her 9-year-old Rat Terrier, Dinky. In this class we’re teaching the dogs to use their nose by playing scenting games. Initially Dinky was a little hesitant, but once she caught on there was no stopping her.
To play this game, the dog is taught first to find a bit of food that has been hidden under one upside down paper cup. Ideally the dog will knock the cup over, but dogs react in many different ways and any notification is fine. When the dog knows to sniff at the cup, then an empty cup is added, then a third and fourth. The dog learns to sniff at and then ignore the empty cups.
When the dog will sniff up and down the line of cups and will find the one with the treat, then we play the old shell game. Four cups are lined up and a treat is hidden under one. Then all the cups are shuffled so even if the dog has watched, he will have to sniff to find the treat.
This is great game for therapy dogs to do when visiting kids (or even adults!). It’s easy for the therapy dog handler to carry four paper cups and some treats.
On some therapy dog visits with Bashir, I’ve carried with me paper cups of different sizes and even some small flower pots. I ask the people we’re visiting to choose which cups to use. I may use six or eight cups. I show them — but not Bashir — where I hide the treat. Then I do the shell game thing, shuffling the cups over and over again. My patter goes something like this, “Do you think I’ve mixed it up enough? No? I should shuffle it some more? Really?” And I’ll get audience involved. Then when I send Bashir searching, I encourage them to cheer him on. When he finds the treat — usually very quickly — they are always amazed!
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Yep old dogs can learn tricks. My old girl is so much more eager to please me now.
Comment by Erich Riesenberg — August 26, 2010 @ 5:33 pm
Old dogs can TOTALLY learn tricks, but let me just admit right here that one of my LEAST favorite things is trying to untrain a behavior that a dog has been really heavily, heavily rewarded for for years in order to get them to learn that other responses are equally acceptable and will not, in fact, result in World Ending Rule Breaking Badness.
Comment by Cait — August 26, 2010 @ 6:07 pm
Ha! Tell me about it Cait.
(Show dog still won’t sit?)
It took me months to brain-bleach Cole and re-teach him that it was possible (nay, eventually mandatory) to “down” without the absolutely necessary involvement of a chunk of food and a luring motion.
He is not a stupid dog. Multiple people spent as many months as I later did retraining him on the project of convincing him that the command for “down” was a cookie dipping towards the floor. Dozens of reps a day. He was convinced when he came here.
Now he thinks that “down” is a pretty funny joke, and often finds different ways to hit the bricks to liven up the punch line. My favorite is when he just folds backwards from a standing position as fast as he can.
Comment by H. Houlahan — August 26, 2010 @ 9:20 pm
No, the show dog still won’t sit. :P We worked on following a lure through a hula hoop this evening instead, since she has to duck to do that, and if I can convince her that following the lure, period, is what I want (right now she just backs up or moves forward and re-stacks), there’s a lot of places to go from there and sit can wait. I’d capture it with a clicker except that she doesn’t sit that I’ve been able to catch yet- just downs.
It’s nto about any particular behavior, really (well, she needs to work on yielding because I hate stepping over dogs and she’s kind of pushy about it). It’s about teaching her that learning and experimenting with new behaviors will be rewarded. She’s got that figured out in other contexts (like countersurfing :P), just not in working with people. She’s a VERY smart dog and lovely to live with and I’m going to enjoy the few months I’m going to have with her before she goes home.
Comment by Cait — August 26, 2010 @ 11:05 pm