Teaching Yorkie Puppy Tricks
 

I was wondering if any of you have any tricks / manners (shaking hands..haha) that worked with Yorkie puppies. Did you use a treat? Clicker from PetsMart? Share the wealth of knowledge...thanks! With a little luck, Abbie will be the new "Doggie-Dogtorian" at Petsmart training graduation. Haha!

There are many very trick gifted yorkies on here...
My Teddy from day one picked up tricks like he had
been doing them his whole life. He is 10 months old
and he sits, shakes,lays down,rolls over, high 5's, does
circles,plays dead,crawls and plays a mean game of fetch.
He started his adolesence obedience this evening. The
first session didn't go too hot but Teddy was attacked
a few months back and the reason we are going through
obedience is more for building his confidence level back
up than anything else. Sit down with your baby make it
fun and you will be shocked at all they will pick up.

Rocky is 11 weeks old and his has learned how the pay fetch. We are working on sitting, but he to busy trying to play then pay attention.

Sophie was doing a whole bunch of tricks as early as 4 months old. She really loves to get treats, so i would entice her with giving her her favorite treats. She loves the pupperoni's. (I cut them up into Tiny - Yorkie bite size pieces)

She is 7 months now, and she can: sit, lay down, roll over, sit pretty, dance, and leave it. She also loves to play fetch.

I would enforce her learning by practicing every single day. Sometimes more than once a day. She loves to show off all of her tricks!

Go to http://www.loveyourdog.com/tricks.html. It describes some great tricks and gives you tips on how to teach your dog to do them. Lucky has learned most of them with the help of many treats and a lot of patience. :)

Scout goes to school at PetSmart, too. He's a baaad boy at school, though. All he wants to do is play with the girl dogs and show them his "stuff"...as in roll over on his back and open up his legs...he's pretty proud of it. It's getting embarassing! He won't do anything at school, but at home he's really good. He knows the basic obedience commands, but he's much better at tricks.
The cutest one I've taught him so far is "wave hi". He waves his little paw multiple times..it's too cute. I am going to try to video it and post it for everyone. The way I taught him was marking the behavior. At times during a sit he would get excited about a treat and lift up his paw. So I used the clicker, and everytime he'd lift his paw I would click and treat. He got it in about 10 minutes, then put a verbal command and hand signal with it: "wave hi" while waving with my fingers up and down. Now he does it without treats, using the verbal and hand signal.

He also does "talk to me"-a single WOOF, when asked. and "up-up": a high flying jump in the air. He delights the fellow schoolmates at Petsmart with his tricks...but try to get him to sit/stay and you got another thing comin!

I never taught Eddie any tricks other than basic obedience, but I'm jealous of people who have taught them. (I tried last night to teach him to dance, and he fell over backward and now will have nothing to do with it.)

The link below is a video of one of my favorite tricks, and I'm embarrassed to say I don't even remember who posted it.

http://www.jusspress.com/day.php?use...entTime=185820

When we taught Chaci tricks we had alot of success using hand signals in addition to telling him what to do. Eventually we could just use the hand signal and he would do the tricks.

Get yourself a clicker, man! They really work!! Actually, my dogs were a little afraid of the clicker sound at first, till they realized they get a treat everytime they hear it. You have to "load the clicker" by just clicking and treating several times before you mark behavior, then start with stuff he can already do before trying new things: "Sit", click and treat.

How old is too old to start training? We have been trying to get lil girl to learn some manners but she's just not getting it! She knows what sit means, and will do it, but will not stay.

Although you can and should teach your yorkie to sit AND stay, I think that yorkies have an easier time doing tricks that utilize their natural behaviors. Since they like to be active and shadow their owners, "stay" is not really natural for some yorkies and is probably especially hard for a pup. If I tell Lucky to "sit" and "stay" and then walk away from her, she'll do it, but she acts like I am torturing her. Since she loves to paw at people, she is best at "shake", "high five", and "wave." Also, since she is very energetic, she loves tricks that allow her to move: "roll over", "circle", "crawl" and "weave" (where she weaves through my legs as I walk forward.)

Great thread!
 

Oh man, this is awesome, thanks folks! I love the videos! Wosie "paws" at people, too, but I did not think of doing "shake", "wave", and "high five" until reading it here!

At 5 months, she's got some of the good stuff already; heel, sit, stay, down, come, and then we just learned dance this week. I would love for her to do some of these things without the treat, and have taken the advice of I forget who about leaving the treat in another room and using the words "let's go get your treat". That only works sometimes, lol, because if I don't HAVE the treat in my hand, there is indeed a bit of cooperation reluctance. Silly little greedy doggie...

That's Oliver in the video above :D He's much better at it now! We haven't done anything new lately, we've been really busy, but I am eager to teach him new things!!

Brooke

That has to be the cutest thing ever, Brooke! Scout used to do that when he was little, I wish I had marked it then. He rarely puts his paws to his eyes now. I finally have Scout's "wave hi" and "talk to me" posted on my jusspress

Here's the link: http://www.jusspress.com/day.php?use...entTime=195604

Hey Sophie's mom, our Nelly has been doing tricks since she was about 3 months. They are basically the same as Sophie's tricks, what is funny is that I use the pupperoni treats as well and cut them into bite size amounts as well.