How quickly/slowly does your dog learn new commands?

[Slick]

I was trick training today, and was once again amazed at how quickly Leo picks up new things. It's really ridiculous how rarely I do trick training with him nowadays, because he could know sooo many tricks by now.

I taught Leo to "close the door" in 2 five minute training sessions. In the first 5 minute session, we perfected the behavior with luring. In the second 5 minutes the next day, I introduced the verbal command, phased out the lure, and moved away so that he was running away from me in order to close the door.

This is pretty typical for him. Easy behaviors he can pick up in 5 minutes, but most others are just 2-3 five minute sessions. He learned how to rebound in two sessions, learned how to jump into my arms in one, etc. etc.
That is all him by the way. I pretty much suck at clicker training. I am constantly clicking slightly too late, or even accidentally clicking when he does it wrong. Somehow he makes sense of it all even despite me.

How quick/slow is your dog at picking up new tricks/commands?

 

[Maxy24]

It depends. There are some things he can learn really fast and things that are painfully slow. I have been trying to teach him to cross his front paws for a loooong time now and he just doesn't get it. At all. It's not something he ever does on his own, unlike some dogs who just randomly lie down and have their paws crossed, so I don't think he even knows how to make it happen with his body. But bigger body movement things he learns fast. Sit, Down, Spin, Paw/high five, bow, and even roll over (though he hates to do it) were all easy to teach. A retrieve was super easy to teach. I taught him to pick up toys and put them in his toy box on command in like two sessions. but I cannot teach him to cross his paws. He also struggled really, really hard with doing a figure 8 through my legs. He'd get lost half way through and think he was done. Heeling took a while but he was continuously making progress so it wasn't frustrating. It really depends on what I'm trying to teach. Anything that is a natural movement for him tends to be easy, like I think he could learn to close a door pretty fast. But foreign motions are very difficult.

 

[Laurelin]

Mia: depends on what I'm teaching. She has learned some complex multi-step behaviors in one sitting. Other things (like stay) I cannot teach her. Or well.. I could but in very very small baby steps with lots of patience and redoing a lot of things I messed up when she was younger.

Summer: I'd say fairly average on most things. she's a bit weirded out by anything involving physicalness from me (like high five or having to walk between my legs, etc). To be fair, I'm a clutz and she knows it. Complex tasks usually take some time for her. She learned agility stuff very very fast though.

Hank: Ridiculously fast. Like... our average training sessions he will learn 3 new things in < 10 minutes. I should train him more, he's amazing. He learned nose touch and step on a target and sit his first day here. In like... 5 minutes. I swear you show him one or two times and he's got it. His sit/down/stay was better than Mia and Summer's in 2 days of having him. He already knows some complex tricks. He's picked up agility stuff fast too- handling maneuvers like differentiating a push versus a wrap, etc. He started doing a rebound on his own so I put it to a command. That took a minute or so to get completely done.

The down side is he thought down meant lie down and then tuck your left front leg under you for the longest time. A miss-click is pretty bad with him because that behavior will be stuck permanently.

 

[teacuptiger]

Roxie picks stuff up really pretty fast. Sometimes she can be very unsure and shy about things, but once she realizes that I won't let anything bad happen to her, she will go for it... unless it's something that she thinks dogs should never do- like holding a remote in her mouth and bringing it to me... she fetches and retrieves great, but only with "her" things.

She also retains things really well- like with toy names, I hadn't practiced retrieving toys by name in months but a few weeks back we started playing with all her toys and boom... she remembered the names I had given them. A little confused at first about a few I don't play with a lot, but a few minutes later and she was solid.

 

[Southpaw]

Cajun learns really fast. Really, really fast. As long as I have some inkling of how to teach it. It was slow going early on as I think previously she was mostly trained to just respond to the pressure of her choke collar, and that was it. So it took a while for her to learn to think and get used to a more reward based system, but once she got used to that... she only needs to be rewarded for something a few times before it starts clicking.

She also generalizes things pretty quickly which I'm always amazed by. It never fails to crack me up when a person across the room can tell their dog "down," and Cajun drops to the floor in a flash

Juno doesn't pick things up AS quickly as she used to, but I wonder how much of that is due to the fact that it's been a looooooong time since we've really done any consistent training. I think she's rusty lol. She's a little tougher for me because she tends to be more methodical, and best when things are broken down into steps.... but I'm terrible at breaking things down.

But overall she's pretty quick, once again as long as I know what I'm doing, I think most things have only taken her a couple sessions to figure out.

 

[amberdyan]

Hugo is really really quick to pick things up. So quick that he actually gets irritated at me if I try to make him do too many reps of something once he knows it, or if I try to break things down into too many steps. If I don't keep challenging him, sometimes he'll sort of just check out and lose motivations.

That being said, some things he's a bit slow to learn. Mostly just disc, lol. I've been trying to teach him (it's probably mostly handler error) but as soon as I throw it more than like a foot it just smashes into his face and he doesn't catch it, lol.

 

[Applebear]

Knarlys was pretty quick in his younger years, though not so much now as a senior. We don't ask much of him now, which is expected. He's enjoying the life of being a spoiled, do nothing for whatever I want mutt.

Ro is fair...he's pretty fast but there are things his chowness comes out on and we just 'uh uh not happening.' But overall, he's pretty sharp and good compared to past chows.

Rip is lightening. Super smart, super fast, super. His down fall though is his over achiever-ness. He some times gets too excited and it causes him to bounce into several commands instead of just focusing on the one given [down...sit, stand, down, back up quickly, wait...what?]. Our newest one is heel, where I am trying to guide him into a heel position. Some times he will do a horse rear move backwards and neeeeiiigh plop, I'm in position! It's what I want, yet....not quite. :/

I'd lower his food value, but he's all ready jumping hoops for a piece of kibble.

 

[Samsonyte!]

Sam learns super fast but he doesn't always have the confidence to try new tricks. I don't think there's any way I could teach him to like, jump into my arms or to do a rebound because he's so put off by jumping up in the air. Same with like, closing doors. He's just so disturbed by the fact that I would ask him to touch a door?!? Really I think it's tricks that involve multiple steps that confuse him.

Wilson learns crazy fast and generalizes really well. He can do any of the things I've taught him at home equally as well in public right off the bat it seems, so long as he isn't too busy being worried about people or cars or anything. But then sometimes he randomly regresses and forgets how to do something so I don't know.

My dogs are weird.

 

[Elrohwen]

Eh, not that fast usually. It's not that he's not smart, but he is emotional and easily frustrated. If I give him too much freedom to make mistakes, he whines and flails and quits because he doesn't know what I want. I have a hard time capturing behavior in real life because he doesn't understand exactly what he was doing when I marked his behavior, and then he can't figure out how to get another treat, and then confusion. I try really hard to set up training sessions so that he is right all the time in the early phases of learning a behavior.

Once he feels confident with a behavior, he's pretty resilient to being wrong or being asked to do it again because it wasn't quite right. So it takes him a while to learn new things, but once he has it, he has it and can generalize quite well.

One example is teaching him to push a cabinet door closed with his nose. He figured out he had to do something to the cabinet in about 2 seconds, and figured out how to nose touch it right after. And since then we've done 3 sessions and he's still frustrated. He does it right 80% of the time, but then he'll take a break to whine or circle, or hit it with his paw instead. I'm clicking often, and he's getting it right again and again, but he still isn't confident in the trick and does a lot of unnecessary flailing around.

 

[Sekah]

Pretty fast, I guess. Maybe at a normal rate? I think people tend to undersell dog intelligence in general and then are convinced that their pets are above average when it comes to learning new things.

 

[BostonBanker]

Honestly, both of mine are probably average to slow, but not because they are stupid.

Meg is simply a worrier, and it takes her a while to get up the courage to try new things. I think she is probably average in intelligence.

Gusto I would guess is on the higher end of the intelligence scale, and as a result overthinks and proofs out every behavior thoroughly. I am working on teaching him to put his paw over his eyes now, and while he has the idea down, we are still working through all of his variations of paw, positions, facial expressions, sounds...I don't consider it a finished product until he is done testing everything. I makes him ridiculously fun to train, as long as I can keep in mind what he is doing and why. It used to frustrate me to no end!

 

[StillandSilent]

I'm pretty sure that Meg and Gimmick are soul siblings. He's exactly the same, though he is showing a bit more confidence lately.

Gambit learns quickly, but only when there's something in it for him. He knows his basics, but when I try anything fancy, he looks at me like. "Mom, I'm a freaking coyote. Do I look like a Golden Retriever?" It cracks me up.