Trick training, pace for new tricks

[cml]

As many of you know, Stitch is doing great in training, and has learnt 5 tricks so far in about 2.5 months. He knows; target, shake, turn around, fetch and most recently wave.

He' really great at picking up new tricks and I try to really work them in so he knows them really good, but at the same time I dont want to go too slow with new tricks either. As we discussed in the other thread, stitch learned "fetch" in a couple of days and we have been just working on that and old tricks for about 10 days. We have worked on his training perch, on our coffee table and on our hands, he can do the tricks everywhere without much hassle..

So today I started with wave, and he learned it in 2 sessions, I made sure to try him later this evening in the midst of a training session with lots of other tricks. WE did run into our first training issue here, in the beginning he was confused with the cue for turn around and wave, but addding a very different tone of voice solved the problem.

My question is, how do you know how fast you can move onto the next trick? We havnt had any problems so far but i dont want to run into problems later!

cheers,
cml

[Michael]

You'll know

[cml]

As I mentioned, for some reason Stitch mixed turn around up with wave when we begun teaching wave, and I thought we had it fixed, but he continued to sometimes mix the two together today.

What are your suggestions, work on only wave for a bit, work on both during the same session, work on both during different sessions (Note: he knows turn around like a charm), or continue with all tricks, the old ones and wave?

[Michael]

Put more focus on the tricks that need work and then throw in some old ones to mix things up from time to time. Don't worry too much about losing a trick because it will come back quickly when you train it again as though from scratch. Use hand cues or the final steps of how tricks were taught to help remind them if they are getting tricks mixed up.