Self Taught Tricks

When I first brought Nubs home with me, he was not crate trained at all. He freaked out at the look of the crate, refused to step into the crate, and fought tooth and nail to stay as far away from the crate as he could. I remember having to climb into the crate myself (it was a LARGE crate) to get Nubs to step into the crate himself. It took about a week of constant working on the crate (and a lot of yummy cheese in the very back of the crate) before one night he just walked into the crate and laid down by himself. Since that day he has enjoyed the crate (and the yummy Peanut Butter kongs that come with the crate!)

He taught himself what the word "crate" or "cage" means go get in the cage and get ready for his yummy treats. I never taught him it, he taught himself.

Now if you were around when I had my foster Little One, you may remember the funny stories of Nubs tricking Little One to go into his crate then shutting the door on the poor fellow. This happened every time Little One was just too much for Nubs to handle. Nubs would run into the crate and fake chewing on one of Little One's bones. Little one would jump into the crate and Nubs would jump out and smack the door shut, then sit against the door and give me a sharp bark to tell me to lock the door. What a funny dog.

Normally I don't have his crate sat up in the house. It is just too big and he normally doesn't need it. Today though it was raining and Nubs has a lot of issues with not wanting to go out potty in the rain. So to save myself the headache of cleaning up poop when i got off of work tonight, I decided to set up the crate and leave Nubs in it. Luckily my boyfriend was able to stop by and get Nubs to go out potty so he was only in the crate for about 3 hours. I hate leaving him in it even though he loves his crate.

Tonight Nubs figured out how to open his crate's door and it didn't take long for him to put that to a command. Here is a video of him doing so along with a new trick that he just learned called "wave hi!"


And then there are the "Bloopers" that had me laughing. Nubs is just silly!



And here he is now, can't you tell he just loves his crate?