One of my dog magazine editors challenged me to teach Lilly to vacuum, after seeing Lilly CLEAN UP her toys. That would be a major dog trick and feat, for a couple reasons. A) Lilly is afraid of the vacuum. B) It’s really heavy. So, instead, I decided to teach her to dust mop the tile floors.
Don’t be amazed yet. We’re nowhere near a complete trick. The real challenge with any complex dog trick is breaking it down into pieces that make sense to the dog.
I manged to shape Lilly putting her front feet on the dust mop pretty quickly, but teaching her to slide it around is a whole other story.
One of our Twitter followers (@primitivedog) suggested rewarding Lilly for letting me pull her around on a towel as an intermediate step. That was hard to do AND click AND hand off treats.
My best idea, so far, is to put the dust mop on her skateboard since she already knows how to push that around with her front feet. (Sorry, since we moved blog platforms, it’s harder for me to find links to previous posts and photos.)
She seemed to get the idea, so when I put the dust mop on the floor and had her get a run at it, she indeed slid the mop a little. I clicked and treated that a couple times, but then she lost the mojo.
I couldn’t get her to do it again, and without at least 5 repetitions, it’s hard for Lilly to understand exactly what action I’m clicking.
Perhaps even this not-vacuum trick it too hard to teach. Any ideas?
(Maybe it’s the feet that are the problem. It might be easier to teach her to pull around the mop with her mouth, via a string or something.)
Our New Microfiber Dust Mop: A mini-rant
You’ll notice that we’re using a microfiber, reusable dust mop. That’s because I’m boycotting Swiffer, due to this unholy union.
So far, I really like the new mop. I just take it outside and give it a firm shake, and it’s ready to reuse. With a little water+vinegar combo from a squirt bottle, I can even us it as a damp mop. When it gets cruddy, I can wash it in the laundry.
I hope the new floor-cleaning solution saves me cash on cleaning supplies and helps avoid bringing any more chemicals into the house. Good all around, I think.
Sheryl … she mostly pushes the skateboard around with her front feet and walks behind it. My goal was for her to ride it, but I underestimated the size skateboard she would need. The one I got is kind of short.
Lilly is very afraid of skateboards when people ride them by on the path, so I thought having her interact with one on her own terms would help. It has some, but she still freaks out in public if I cannot get her enough space fast enough.
How cute that would be if you could really get her to do the mopping – and how convenient! I missed the skateboard trick. Does she really ride one?
Well I can say for sure I could never get my dogs to do this! And thanks for that link. I don’t use Swiffer products and am glad I don’t!
That’s a tough trick, because it’s not a normal action, walking with the hind feet and sliding the front ones. I like your idea about the skateboard a lot. I wonder whether Lily would be more prone to ‘get’ this trick if you did the skateboard trick with the mop head on it a whole ton of times. Then, when she felt the mop under her feet, it might be almost automatic to try to push it with her hind feet.
Just a thought…. not sure whether it’s a good one.
Something told me that I was going to open that link and see Cesar Milan’s face. Ewwwwww.
I have absolutely no idea how I would go about this.. I have not wound up being much of a trick trainer. Most of my shaping sessions end up with Marge pawing and biting at the object I want her to interact with without me being able to narrow it down further. But, I do definitely agree that using a mop is probably better for Lilly than the vacuum.
Ha! Cathy … I think the look is more about me having a camera in her face than the mop, but she does look a tad intense.
I have to say, Lilly looks as excited about mopping as I am!
I remember a skit by Phyllis Diller years ago – her solution to mopping was to have a crawling baby- attach rags to it’s legs & hands and then toss a cookie across the room. While there are several problems with that method I like the ingenuity!
I HATE all disposable cleaning items and have stuck with regular cloth octopus-like mops for years. Until they come with a maid attached to the mop who is willing to hunt up all those dog hairballs, I’ll have the Lilly face on while cleaning.
Thanks, Roxanne and Hilda! Now if I could only teach my dogs to do the dust mopping! Right…..
Wow, that will be quite the trick. It seems like the string might be an easier option. I could see how it would be hard to push the mop around if Lilly has it weight with her front legs. Keep us posted with your progress!
That’s a great idea, Hilda, to use the regular clothes on your existing mop thing.
With the muppet-mop I’m using, they say NOT to wash it with towels or anything that may lint them up. So far, I’ve been washing them by hand, as needed.
Maybe you could just rinse the heck out of them in the sink, then throw them into the laundry.
Lilly is so cute!
As much as I used to love the convenience of Swiffer products, I agree that washable, reusable microfiber mops are the way to go.
I actually found some microfiber cleaning cloths at the dollar store for very cheap (i.e. $1.00) and bought 3 or4 of them. Now I’m using them on my Swiffer mop in lieu of the disposable Swiffer cloths — and this works great.
The mopheads sometimes get so dirty though, that I don’t feel good about washing them in a regular load of laundry, and it seems wasteful to wash them separately. Anybody have thoughts on this?
Kerri … I had to buy the mop head/handle that goes with the muppet-like cloth. We got ours at a home & garden show a couple months ago from one of those microphone-wearing demo guys (who BTW claimed to be a neighbor/friend of he who shall not be named).
We bought a couple mop heads, a couple microfiber cleaning cloths, and a few other things in a kit.
Here is a link to a site, but I don’t see the mop head we use, except in a picture in the header.
http://www.starfibers.com/mops.php
I think ours is a pro version.
I bought a couple 99-cent spray bottles at the grocery too, and I mix 1 part vinegar to 3 parts water for my cleaning solution.
Thanks, Roxanne, for linking to that unholy alliance. Besides it being Earth Day month, I just needed a little extra push to move from my disposable Swiffer products. Does your reuseable microfiber mop fit the swiffer boom handle thingy? Where did you get it?