Teaching Yorkie Tricks

Teaching Yorkie Tricks.

The first thing you need to do is establish a loving bond with your dog. He/she has to respect and love you. Respect is not the same thing as fear: I cannot emphasize this enough. If you punish, hit, chain or scream at your dog, you will accomplish little in the way of training, the only thing you will achieve is an animal that will shy away from people and hide as often as possible. Respect stems from your animal learning to listen to you and follow your lead as if you were the dog 'Pack Leader'. Positive reinforcement is the way to go.

<b> Getting Yorkie's attention.</b>

Teaching Yorkie to listen sufficiently to learn to perform tricks takes patience. Firstly, you must begin by reinforcing natural dog behavior, by giving that action a name and a result. Eg:- Sitting is natural. In order to get your dog to sit on command you need to link his/her behavior with a single, repeated word-the name- and a treat and praise-the result- when the dog performs correctly.

Do not attempt to train the dog when the animal is tired, very hungry or excited by outside stimuli. (Eg:- the postman walking past!).

 

Begin in a calm environment, keep extra treats hidden in your pocket or on a nearby shelf or table. Thinly sliced Biltong(Beef Jerky) is a good option, since it's easy to store for doggie lessons and easy to stash in your pocket; also Yorkies love it. Do not give your a Yorkie dairy products, such a cheese, as treats, dairy does not suit their sensitive tummies. It is also a good practice to set aside a regular time for training: dogs love ritual.

Place the dog in front of you. Hold a treat in your hand. Let the Yorkie see this treat, hold it in front of his nose so that he/she can smell it then raise your hand- the Yorkies eyes and attention should now be on you.

Say the word 'sit', then gently place your hands on the dog's back and guide his/her rump to the floor. When the dog is seated hand over the treat and praise the dog highly, repeat this action for periods of fifteen to twenty minutes at a time until the dog learns to perform the action on his/her own. Feed small treats every time he/she succeeds. Eventually your dog will do the trick without manual stimulation. It took my four month old Yorkie fifteen minutes to learn this trick. Repeat the trick daily. Hand over treats at first, but eventually withdraw them, your Yorkie will continue to perform this trick.

<b>Yorkie sitting on command</b>

It is important to always use the same word-one word not two-for the action, best results are obtained if you combine the word with a hand signal. Eg:- point to the ground. When you begin teaching a new trick, begin the lesson by reinforcing the 'sit' trick first, and giving Yorkie praise and a treat. In this way he/she will work out that you want him/her to do something for you for which you will offer praise and treats.

Good luck! Add comments to this post if you succeed, and tell us how long it took you to get your dog to sit on command.