tRicky T-Day! (sort of again) and a Surprise!

A little while ago our YouTube friend Sian asked for people and their dogs to send in clips showing positively-trained good behaviors. So we sent one and were included in the video Sian made this week about dog training that works. The video is a little long but shows dogs doing really well-behaved stuff - I'm near the end - 4:06 to be exact - in case you need to skip - but don't unless you absolutely have to because the video is really good! I am not technically clicker-trained with a clicker but mom uses a marker word. And we can't claim that mom has never in my life used the word "No!" with me, but I am definitely an example of a dog who has been trained predominately with positive reinforcement! (ie. FOOD!!!!) The video is trying to show people that you don't have to be harsh or mean or use things like shock collars to teach dogs good manners. Amen to that!

I was proud to have been included in Sian's video and she plans to make another one. So if you are interested, leave her a message on her YouTube page. Sian is a really talented trainer and has lots of awesome trick tutorial videos! We have learned a lot from her and her dogs!

Now for the surprise!!!! Diana and Miley are coming HERE for dinner and a visit Wednesday on their way to Linda Mecklenburg's camp! Can you believe it? We get to meet them after being blogging buddies for so long! WooHoo - we are so excited and can't wait! Do you think Miley will like me? Do you think I will like her? Guess we'll find out!!

Gotta zoom!

Ricky

tRicky T-Day!

We made a new friend on YouTube the other day - Tim and his poodle Tassilo - and we were inspired right away to learn a new trick from Tassilo's video! Tassilo does is much better than me and also does more than I do, but I wanted to show off my new trick any way for this week's tRicky T-Day!

Actually getting that far was pretty easy - mom rolled up the towel and told me, "Nose" and I went right over and started unrolling the towel! Then mom just had to say, "Down"! She wants to call the trick something like "Let's go to the beach" so she is starting to say, "Beach, nose" to me - you are supposed to put the new command before the old one when you are teaching a new command and then eventually you can fade out the old one. And in the video, you can't see mom but she isn't doing anything other than what you hear - like no special off-camera signals and no telling me to lie down - that's all part of the trick now. Maybe someday I will learn how to roll my towel back up and carry it away like Tassilo does!

We're still trying to figure out how to edit Flip videos - all the videos we have made lately were put on YouTube directly out of the Flip software. So they take FOREVER to upload but come out looking awesome in HD. This one we made for today by converting the MP4 to AVI (with free converter software called AnyVideo converter) and then put it into WMM. So we got to use WMM , and the upload time was quick, but the video quality is horrible - even though we used an HD camera. This is crazy. We might end up having to spend money on editing software, but it's too bad because WMM does enough stuff for us and we are comfortable using it. Why can't everything just be compatible with everything else? Can't we all just get along - lol!

Gotta zoom!

Ricky