Trick of the week: Pivot!

[SaraB]

This week's (actually 2 weeks because I decided that was better) trick is to pivot around a pedestal! This is a great trick to increase hind end awareness and is a great way to teach the foundations of pivoting in heel.

The goal is to have your dog's front feet on an upside down bowl (or box or whatever you have) and have them move their hind feet around them, turning in a circle. You can either have them pivot into heel position (with you standing next to the bowl) or you can do an independent pivot.

Just so that everyone knows what I'm talking about and because this video is so adorable, here is baby Zinga learning to pivot into heel position.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/jPUFhHuflAg?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[Beanie]

Sweet! P already knows this one but it's on my to-do list to get him going both directions on command to eventually turn into directionals... and I have been meaning to keep working on this with Pepper so this will give me that excuse!
And Auggie really needs to do it more too but the barking urgh.

 

[Sekah]

Pivot is the best thing I ever taught my dog. It opened so many avenues as far as tricks and basic obedience goes once we got some solid rear end awareness going. I highly recommend everyone work on this with their dogs.

 

[SaraB]

Pivot is the best thing I ever taught my dog. It opened so many avenues as far as tricks and basic obedience goes once we got some solid rear end awareness going. I highly recommend everyone work on this with their dogs.

Same here. Obviously it's one of the first things I teach a dog (Zinga is 10 weeks old in that vieo), I use it as a foundation for so many other behaviors its ridiculous.

 

[Maliraptor]

Can I jump in, in the middle of these weekly tricks, or did I need to go from start to finish?

 

[SaraB]

Can I jump in, in the middle of these weekly tricks, or did I need to go from start to finish?

Jump in!

 

[PWCorgi]

I'm so excited for this!! I've tried multiple times to get this done with Frodo, but always end up giving up!

Hopefully this time I can stick with it!

I can spin in a circle and he will stay correctly in front position, but yeah right on moving his back feet while I am in front of him! Should be fun!

 

[Taqroy]

I'm excited to get back into trick week (or weeks ). Tipper sorta knows this but won't do spin independently so we'll work from there.

 

[skittledoo]

Cricket knows how to do this when I stand next to her and she pivots at a heel going both clockwise and counter clockwise. I think my goal is going to be to shape her doing it on her own without heeling next to me.

 

[sassafras]

Squash can do a mean left and right pivot while sitting at the heel, but I decided to work on using a platform (bowl) today anyway with everyone. Seems like a useful tool and also we all have major cabin fever and need stuff to work on anyway.

Someday the videos will be uploaded and I will post them, but I'm super happy with how everyone did today. The last time I tried shaping for one of these tricks (with close the drawer) I literally sat and stared at Pip and Maisy for something like 10 minutes at a time waiting for them to do something other than stare back at me. This time they both got the hang of it super quick. My goal for this morning was just get them to nose touch the bowl, and both Pip and Squash ended up pawing it.




Also, my random question was "How many eyes does a cat that is missing one eye have?" How... charming.

 

[Babyblue5290]

OMG I think I'm going to die of cuteness overload! LOL

 

[monkeys23]

Oooh I'm going to have to video Lily's progress on this! Its really been coming together in a huge way with both the girls' lately! Scout's a bit behind Lily, but is also doing awesome with pivot!

 

[sassafras]

Ok, Squash first.

[YOUTUBE]H_hqmUYKaQw[/YOUTUBE]


Maisy wins the tail-wagging award.

[YOUTUBE]0bF4OqDEu4Q[/YOUTUBE]


Pip's is the longest but he's so amusing and I like how he clearly switches from orienting towards me to orienting towards the dish as it progresses. When his back is to the camera he actually puts his paw up on the dish for the first time.

[YOUTUBE]bTdGnADirmU[/YOUTUBE]

 

[PWCorgi]

I hate Windows 8 with a passion. It doesn't want to upload my video!

 

[PWCorgi]

Finally!

For those of you who want to watch, feel free to skip to about 3 minutes in when we finally get our crap together

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_bVh2HYVpbY?list=UUyANRHNCIH8QoBBg7ollm2Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[sassafras]

He looks so good!

I'm jealous since I'm still at the "put your feet on this thing, mmkay?" phase.

 

[sassafras]

Also, I wish only my feet and calves showed up in my videos, especially when I don't think about what I'm wearing.

 

[PWCorgi]

Also, I wish only my feet and calves showed up in my videos, especially when I don't think about what I'm wearing.

You need significantly shorter dogs to get away with that

 

[Sekah]

Here's my submission. Cohen's return to heel from front has gotten sloppy, and it used to be absolutely gorgeous so it's probably good for me to work a bit more on this with an actual perch. I was surprised to see how much stronger her swing was to my right. Though, one of the tricks I ask her to do a lot is to circle around me backwards and that's the side she does it on so I guess she's been better conditioned to use that side.

I was also working on her swinging into position and maintaining a stand. I think her swing to my left was yucky because she anticipated the sit (which she should... only after she's in position).

Her front has also gotten really sloppy - I didn't even bother with it in this video. One of these days I'll be motivated enough to tidy it up...

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VywTIFtU1Vw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

http://youtu.be/VywTIFtU1Vw

 

[skittledoo]

ACK!!!!!

Alrighty... I haven't taken any video yet because I have to charge the batteries for my camcorder. sorry. I will take videos though.

Cricket is doing great. I used the upside bowl method when I originally taught her to pivot in a heel so she already had an idea what to do. Right now with her I'm free shaping her to pivot around the bowl without me having to be next to her in a heel position. She's doing great.

Bamm is doing fairly well. He gets soooooooo overly excited about training sometimes that it takes a LOT of patience with him. He would touch the bowl. I click/treat. Then he puts a paw on the bowl. I click/treat, then he put both paws on bowl. I click/treat. He was doing SO well up to that point and then he bit at the bottom of the bold and decided to pounce onto the bowl with his front paws and push it clear across the room. Oh Bamm.... I just kept putting the bowl back and clicking when he had both paws on the bowl. He'll get it and then occasionally he'll be like WOOOOOO EEEEEEEEEEE and fling the bowl across the room again. Oh Bamm.... lol. He's overly excited so we do some puppy pushups to try and wear him out a little bit and then back to the bowl we go. This time he was better and I even got a few side steps out of him. Ended it there.

Joey... if anyone wants a good challenge I'll ship him your way. He just kept spinning circles next to the bowl and when I wouldn't give him a treat he would lie down and just stare at me. I tried to shuffle the bowl around to get him to look at it and nope. This went on for almost 10 minutes of him getting up and spinning and then lying down and staring at me. I even tried to hold the bowl up to see if he would even look at it if was not on the ground. Nope. I think I may need some advice when it comes to trying this trick out with him. helpppp