I watched the documentary "A Dog's Life" on Netflix recently, and learned about a cue called "Do As I Do" that's been used to study dog memory and learning through imitation. Basically, you do any action and the dog mimics you. It looked like fun to this former dog trainer, so I decided to try it out with Wilo. Wilo is my 7-year-old Basenji mix, my favorite "souvenir" from when we lived in Zambia, southern Africa.
To start, you need 3 cues that your dog knows well. I always combine verbal cues with hand signals, so first I practiced sit, jump up, and go away using only a verbal cue. She actually already knew that really well, so we quickly moved onto me cycling through demonstrating one of the known behaviors, then saying "do it (cue name)." She mastered the other two, but had a little trouble initially with "go away" (actually, do it go away is "cita tiye" to her as she's trained in ciBemba language). She kind of hates that cue anyways since it sometimes means she's underfoot or otherwise in the way, so maybe her distaste contributed to that. Eventually she got all three, and I was able to phase out the cue name and just demonstrate the action then tell her to do it. Towards the end, she was not even waiting for me to say "do it" and rushing into things. (Often when we're training, she reminds me of that goody two-shoes in class who raises her arm frantically before the teacher is done asking the question.) Next, we tried some other cues she knew (shake, lay down, bow) but I just demonstrated and said "do it." She did so well! I may be biased, but she really is a smart girl. We ended with batting a ball; in the next few days we'll work on more cues she's never done before.
Has anyone ever done this with their dogs? If not, I highly recommend it, it's a really fun way to exercise your dog's brain!
And because I know the rules, here are some pictures of Wilo.
To start, you need 3 cues that your dog knows well. I always combine verbal cues with hand signals, so first I practiced sit, jump up, and go away using only a verbal cue. She actually already knew that really well, so we quickly moved onto me cycling through demonstrating one of the known behaviors, then saying "do it (cue name)." She mastered the other two, but had a little trouble initially with "go away" (actually, do it go away is "cita tiye" to her as she's trained in ciBemba language). She kind of hates that cue anyways since it sometimes means she's underfoot or otherwise in the way, so maybe her distaste contributed to that. Eventually she got all three, and I was able to phase out the cue name and just demonstrate the action then tell her to do it. Towards the end, she was not even waiting for me to say "do it" and rushing into things. (Often when we're training, she reminds me of that goody two-shoes in class who raises her arm frantically before the teacher is done asking the question.) Next, we tried some other cues she knew (shake, lay down, bow) but I just demonstrated and said "do it." She did so well! I may be biased, but she really is a smart girl. We ended with batting a ball; in the next few days we'll work on more cues she's never done before.
Has anyone ever done this with their dogs? If not, I highly recommend it, it's a really fun way to exercise your dog's brain!
And because I know the rules, here are some pictures of Wilo.