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.

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by Maliraptor

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!

[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