Trick Title Update: Read Me a Bed Time Story?

Well now that the trail is over it's back to perfecting Gaius' tricks for his trick titles. I had a little set back yesterday teaching Gaius to run through a rolling hoop (not technically required for his trick titles but a cute thing to teach). You see the hoop fell on him mid jump and scared him. Which caused him to shriek and run away. The hoop got tangled in his feet and he dragged it across the apartment with him at full speed until it tripped him on the tile in my front hall and he skidded head first into the wall. Suffice it to say he decided he no longer likes the hula hoop.

In fact the next time I pulled one out to practice he whined and hid under the couch. I pulled him out and tried to do some counter conditioning but ended up moving a bit to fast and he ran into the bathroom and spent the next three hours cowering in the bathtub. I felt too guilt to move him again. So let's just say we are currently working on gaining confidence around hula hoops. So in the mean time here is a trick that Gaius already knew but had to be perfected in order to qualify for the trick title (I had to add the head down at the end).



This actually took some time to teach. At first I couldn't get him to roll over with anything in his mouth. I started with his obediance dumbbell. Can you roll over while holding something fimilar in your mouth? When he had that down I moved on to a wash cloth folded into four. When he could do that I slowly unfolded the wash cloth. We ran into a bit of a snag when it got large enough to catch under him when he rolled. The pressure caused by his body cause him to drop it. But we went slow and he got over that we moved on to something actually dachshund blanket sized. Teaching him to pick up the corner by himself didn't take much time at all and tada!