Trick Title Update: The Day has Finally Come!

Finally a video of Gaius retrieving a "beer" from the fridge. Ok, it's a small bottle of whiskey but I experimented with the whole carry a beer thing and it just wasn't happening (I mean he could do it, just not very reliably). Let's say I was afraid it would end in a party foul and a lot of broken glass.

This trick actually took a few weeks which is much longer than most of the stuff I teach him. The hardest thing I think was trying to convince him to really tug on the door to open it. He is very small and it takes a good deal of force at that angle to make the door open. Also he has to angle himself the right way (perpendicular to me, not facing me the way we do most of his tricks) or the door won't open. Both of these left Gaius tugging once, and then unenthusiastically and giving up and it seemed each training session I had to build his door opening confidence back up. So it was a two steps forward one step back sort of deal.

The easiest thing was the actual retrieving which he's very good at. Though he was scared of the door closing on him for a while. Closing the door was easy to teach but he had some issues understanding the seprate commands for each. You can hear me in the video say the command close twice just to make sure he got it. Sometimes he'd tug on the rope going back because he couldn't distinguish open and close I think.

To make this trick more reliable it defiantly needs more polishing. But here's the trick from start to finish :) I hope you enjoy.

OH! I'm not sure if I'll get another post in before Friday but just a reminder that this is Gaius' first agility trial weekend! YAY! I'll be staying in a hotel in MD with my parents Saturday night. If it has the internet I'll try and post to give you all a run down of how it went. If not you'll have to wait till Monday! Wish us luck!