Day 350 in 2019

Gimli loves learning new tricks. Training with your dog, either for obedience or for tricks, is a great way to bond with them. In the process you build a language that you both speak and understand together, and speaking the same language is a means of creating inclusion and building trust. One of the ways that we settle Gimli down in new surroundings, when he's anxious and uneasy, is to grab his attention and ask him to perform a trick with us. It's our way of saying "we may be in a new and unsettling situation, but some things haven't changed, some things you can rely on".

Gimli knows about 30 commands, the majority of which he understands not only by command gesture but also by voice command alone, and at least half of which he can perform at a distance or in distractions.

He knows all your basics: name response, sit, down, stay, come, and look at me.

In addition to the basics he knows many of the "good behavior" commands: heel (on left), come by (on right), go to bed, crate up, leave it, and nose boop (better known as touching a hand target, used mainly for shape training).

ALSO, he knows most of the common "fun commands", like fetch, roll over x2 (both directions), spin x2 (in both directions), shake x2 (both paws), speak, sit pretty, high five, and chill (similar to play dead, but I refuse to even playfully kill our dog).

Then there are the purely silly trick commands we've worked on: kiss, wave goodbye, bow, stand (tall), back up, go around (circle anything), peak-a-boo (through the legs), weave (through legs), jump over, go under, and crawl. Plus he knows the names of several of his toys and will go find them and bring them on command.

Then today we started work on balancing a treat on the nose, and here's where a real self-awareness comes into play with great importance. I really wanted this to be as easy as all the other tricks, which were embarrassingly easy to teach. But where in the past I met with eagerness and skill today I was met with anxiety and defiance. He was uncertain. In the world of the language we had built he was lost and did not understand and that left only uncertainty and a break down of trust. I could have kept pushing, because he was slowly getting the gist of my request, but instead I read his discomfort and, after a few tries, gave up for the time being and spent a few minutes reassuring him with commands and language he was comfortable with. Will we come back to this trick? Probably, but clearly I need to first figure out which steps I skipped that will give him the common language we need to get through. Balance a treat on his nose was too much because treats coming towards him have always been awarded. First he probably needs to learn how to balance something else on his nose, then he needs to learn that some treats may fly at his nose with entering his mouth. When we've accomplished those steps, then we can move forward.

Because the training is less about the perfect dog, and mostly about the perfect relationship.