Trick Training: Fetch My Hat

Well, we learnt a fun new trick today! It’s called “Fetch My Hat”, and means Kim (or Dylan, whoever is there first) takes off my woolley hat, either off my head or off someone else’s head, and gives it to me.

Dylan picked it up in about 10 minutes, but he’s quicker to offer new behaviours for the clicker and he’s always had a bit of a thing for hats anyway. Kim took a bit longer, we worked on it for 5 mins last night and she was super quick by the end, but she needs to feel it’s worth it. This morning she was a bit unsure, so we abandoned the clicker and the treats and just made it a game, which worked a lot better. She’ll happily sprint across a room and over furniture to steal people’s hats now.

I have to admit this is a hilariously fun game, especially when I ask family members to wear the hat. Dylan is super gentle about taking it off my head, but then he has to do a lap of honour before actually giving the hat back. Plus, he’s pretty dribbley, so my hat ends up kind of damp. Luckily I have many hats, so I can swap them about. Kim is not dribbley at all but she is impatient and doesn’t care how much hair she pulls out. She doesn’t mean to, and she’s very gentle around people’s face and ears, but whipping it off the top of your head when you’re sat down sometimes yanks out some hair. She doesn’t care, she just likes killing the hats.

We have to work on stopping the hat killing, actually, but apart from that the trick is polished. So, what to do next? We’ve been doing some prep work for “out of the washer and into the dryer” (our washer and dryer are right next to each other) but that’s not quite there yet. I’d like to teach them to limp, but I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do that yet so I’ll leave it a while, I have some ideas but they need fine tuning! I’d also like to teach “put your collar on” but Kim works with her paws, not her nose, so I’m not sure she’ll pick that up. Dylan probably could though … Hmm, we’ll see!