|
Welcome to the YorkieTalk.com Forums Community - the community for Yorkshire Terriers. You are currently viewing our boards as a guest which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community you will have access to post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), respond to polls, upload content and access many other special features. You will be able to chat with over 35,000 YorkieTalk members, read over 2,000,000 posted discussions, and view more than 15,000 Yorkie photos in the YorkieTalk Photo Gallery after you register. We would love to have you as a member! Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free so please, join our community today! If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please click here to contact us. |
|
| LinkBack | Thread Tools |
04-23-2012, 02:47 PM | #1 |
Yorkie Talker Join Date: Jan 2012 Location: greeley, co, usa
Posts: 23
| pet stair training I just found out my yorkie has a luxating patella and I bought some pet stairs in an effort to limit furniture jumping. She won't go up them and will only go down if I sit there with a treat lure...any ideas how to train this besides keep presenting treat lures? |
Welcome Guest! | |
04-23-2012, 03:05 PM | #2 |
Yorkie mom of 4 Donating YT Member Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: LaPlata, Md
Posts: 23,247
| When we first put the stairs at one of Callie's favorite places to lay (the couch) I used boxes to block off any way up to the couch but the stairs so if she wanted up she had to do the stairs and if she wanted down she had to use the stairs. I also used treats.
__________________ Taylor My babies Joey, Penny ,Ollie & Dixie Callie Mae, you will forever be in my heart! |
04-23-2012, 03:10 PM | #3 |
♥ Love My Tibbe! ♥ Donating Member Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: D/FW, Texas
Posts: 22,140
| I had this problem with Tibbe when I first got him as he just wanted to jump directly off the high furniture & would not use the stairs. So I started training him to go up and down it with a phrase, "Stool Jump", (which is silly for doggy stairs but I used it with Jilly as when I first got her all we had were stools and no pet stairs at all so got used to saying that). Anyway, I would put up poster board on either side of the steps and praise & treat him every time he went up and down the stairs when I said "Stool Jump". Eventually, took the poster board down and if he missed even the bottom step and jumped to the floor from the second step, I would say "Uh oh!", frown, turn my head away from him and he wouldn't get a treat. I would wait about 15 seconds and then say "Stool Jump" in a happy voice, smiling, and lure him back up and down the steps, holding my hands alongside so that he wouldn't tend to cheat and jump early. When he went all the way down on only the steps, I would then say "Good Stool Jump" and treat/praise him. If he didn't use the steps, he got the correction, head turned away, and he could tell from my negative reaction he had missed the mark. Then, smiling & cheerful, I would lure him back up and down the steps with the phrase, keeping my hands alongside so he wouldn't cheat and treating/praising when he used every step to jump down. EVERY SINGLE TIME he cheated & missed one or more steps, we went through the whole thing again with the uh-oh's, the head-turned away, etc., and this continues until this day. I never let him off a cheat without the correction exercise so he soon learned that it was faster in the long run to get him where he wanted to go to just use the steps all the way down and he could get to where he was wanting to go much faster. Now, he misses a step about once every month or so, when he's really excited due to the mailman coming, hearing a cat on the front porch, someone at the door, etc. Those episodes of skipping a step because someone is at the door, of course, I have to let slide but all the others, we always go through the whole little training episode the once in a great while he still cheats. Just be infinitely patient and make the going down the whole set of steps a big deal when he does it right, use your hands while he's still in the last of training and before long, your little one will be habituated to using just the steps 99% of the time. This or some variation of it will probably teach your little one to use them but it does take some persistence on your part but you can do it.
__________________ Jeanie and Tibbe One must do the best one can. You may get some marks for a very imperfect answer: you will certainly get none for leaving the question alone. C. S. Lewis |
Bookmarks |
|
|
| |
|
|
SHOP NOW: Amazon :: eBay :: Buy.com :: Newegg :: PetStore :: Petco :: PetSmart