Weekly Training Update (April 2)

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.