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last night we had a break through. duke learned how to 'stand' on command.

this after 2 years of not being able to get him to stand through, luring, tickling and prodding methods that we learned from the obedience school that we attended.

stand is the cue for a dog to stand on all four paws and is usually used for show dogs and is also used in rally obedience.

each time we enrolled in courses, there was always 1 or 2 commands that we just couldn't teach duke. in the first basic obedience course it was down. in fact, the instructor couldn't even get duke to go into down position and went through all of his different techniques to no avail when he was using duke as his demo dog.

during our 2nd more advanced class, we just couldn't get duke to 'stand'. last night, however, after 2 minutes he learned to 'stand' on cue from being in 'down' position.

what was the biggest difference? clicker training that didn't require me to touch his body to move into position or use a lure to bribe him into position. since duke already knew touch, we started with him being in down and then calling for a 'touch' on my hand. soon after, i started saying 'stand' before the touch command and in a few short minutes, he had transferred the 'touch' command to the 'stand' command.

so now that he has learned all of the basic obedience positions, it's time to polish them all up and hopefully we'll be able to debut duke at a rally obedience competition. i'm hoping we can get him a novice title by the end of the year!

cross-posted to baying beagle