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Summary: Learn how to train your Yorkshire Terrier to recognize his name in this free online dog obedience training video for pet owners.
Views: 6,007 | Tags: technique, train, dog, obedience, sit, dogs, trick, animals, behavior, stay, heel, come, dogtraining, dogobedience, animal training, dog commands
About the Expert
Melanie McLeroy She attends conferences regularly, particularly those sponsored by APDT, Tufts and others. She is a trainer in the Head Start program at Town Lake Animal Cent... read more
Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village and today we’re going talk about training dogs. Yorkshire Terriers are wonderful little dogs and very affectionate and high energy and make great companions, but keep in mind that they’re still Terriers so they have a feisty little personality. It’s very important to teach your Yorkshire Terrier from a young age to pay attention and let you set the tone for your household. If you haven’t yet already, please check out the pre-training videos before you start working with your little Yorkie. This is little Tuffy, he’s very, very cute and sweet. Now Tuffy is too interested in my treat bag, so I’m going to move it out of the way and start working on him learning his name. I want to say his name in a high pitched voice and when he makes eye contact with me, then I mark it and give him a treat. Now, I don’t want to do it now because I’d be setting him to up to fail, I need to bring him back around here, Tuffy, now he needs some help. He has no idea what I want. So I can either wait for him to look at me, nope, that was a cheat or I can make a little noise to help him out …good. So I want sustained eye contact I don’t want just a little flick of an eyeball, now I want to teach him to move a little more quickly, so I’m actually going to move the food from his nose up to my eyes to help him know that is what I want him to do. Tuffy, …good, very nice… yummy cheese. Tuffy … good. I’m going to switch hands Tuffy … good so there I tried to see if he had gotten the idea yet, but he hadn’t, so he still needs a little help. I really want to fade that signal moving my hand up to my eyes pretty quickly, though so I can get a little closer Tuffy… good, we’re running short on time. So let me explain the progression of what would happen next. Little Tuffy will start making eye contact quicker and quicker, you want to fade that little visual signal by moving your hand in different areas and really rewarding when he looks at you, then you won’t be using any visual signals at all and you start making your reinforcement random and that’s how to teach your Yorkshire Terrier to pay attention to you.