Pavlov had it all wrong
I am a single adult human living in a house with two corgis. Got Girldog from a shelter when she was about a year, year and a half old maybe; got Boydog a few years later as an 8-week puppeh. And let me tell you something, from Day One, this has been a three-way psychological experiment. I no longer know who is manipulating who on a daily basis.
One of the first things I trained Girldog to do was not to bark at the dinner table; if she barked at me while I was eating, I put her in The Quiet Place (her crate) where she couldn’t see me. She learned almost immediately to subvocalize her barks, to let out a breath with just enough vocal cord vibration that I wouldn’t QUIIIITE consider it a bark and move her further away from the food. It’s a sound like this: “Hrrrr. Hrrrr. Hhhrahhh.” I didn’t realize how odd this was until my aunt came over and said, “That dog hissed at me.” “Yes,” I said, “she does that.”
Boydog learned to do tricks by watching Girldog. I never taught him to sit. He learned by watching Girldog get a treat for sitting. Once, I told both dogs to sit at the same time, while I held a treat in each hand. When Girldog didn’t sit quick enough, Boydog put his paw on her butt and pushed her down.
I hung a bell on the door and taught Boydog to ring it when he wants to go out. Girldog sees no reason she should ring the bell, as it is beneath her dignity, and she can get her way by barking instead. Boydog, however, will ring the bell for Girldog when she lurks around by the door, although he has no interest in going outside himself. Girldog has made Boydog her personal slave in this matter.
Boydog rings the bell when he doesn’t need to go out but thinks I have been at my computer too long. By the time I get to the kitchen, he’s nowhere near the door, but hey mom, as long as you’re up, let’s play! He obviously does not believe I can see through this extremely clever ploy.
Girldog once climbed onto a sofa, crossed the back of it, leapt from the sofa to my desk chair, leapt from the chair to the desk, and knocked all my stuff off the desk. (I wasn’t there, but it was obvious from the trail of destruction what route she had taken.) Then she got down and proceeded to ignore the bag of corn chips she’d encountered and focus her attention on biting my phone charger in half, chewing up a USB memory stick, and eating a pen. I still have no idea how she could be so smart and so dumb at the same time.
Boydog will chase a laser pointer (not uncommon for dogs introduced to them as puppies! Pro tip) but only when Girldog is not around, because she hates it for some reason and will tackle him for it. Girldog also likes to be outside while I want to be in, and Boydog prefers to have us both inside. Boydog will lead me to the laser pointer, pester me until I get it down, and then run around chasing the laser and barking madly. No matter how stubborn Girldog has been about staying outside, she wants to know what he’s barking at and immediately comes inside. (It is always the laser pointer he’s barking at, Girldog. Always.)
There is a chair in my bedroom that I cannot sit on. The dogs take turns sleeping on it, depending on who gets there first. The only hard and fast rule is that if the human sits on the chair, they will both lose their cool. The chair is for dogs only. I have not even tried to sit on the chair for about six months now.
I suspect I’ll be adding more of these as the three of us continue to train each other.
When my pet rat was young, I had to train her to not try to eat ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING, like my shirt while I’m wearing it and she’s sitting on my shoulder. Before I got to this point, I managed to train her to get into the cage when we got near it by giving her a piece of popcorn, which she would then take to a safe spot on the cage to eat it.
For the “don’t eat my shirt” training (and house-training too), whenever she tried to eat something she shouldn’t eat (or peed/pooped anywhere not in the cage), I would immediately pick her up, tell her “NO”, and take her back to the cage and not give her the popcorn like I normally would. She caught on within a week or two regarding what she shouldn’t chew on and where it was okay to go to the bathroom.
And then she started chewing on my shirt again. But it wasn’t really chewing, per se. She would grab my shirt with her teeth, pull like she would if she was trying to get a piece to eat, and then I’d take her right back to the cage like usual. Except sometimes I’d be lazy and not take her to the cage, I’d just say “no” and push her away a bit. And she’d do it again.
That’s right, MY PET RAT TRAINED ME to take her back to the cage when she tugged on my shirt, because she would get bored of sitting on my shoulder or running around on my bed and want to go home.
When my dog was a puppy, she used to play with her water bowel when it was empty, which would make a lot of noise, so I’d get up and fill it so she’s stop doing that. She very quickly taught herself to play with the water bowl when it needed refilling, and then to actually bring us her food or water bowl when it was mealtimes.
We have cats now, and we wait to feed them until they’re not meowing or bugging us so that they don’t harass us about food (at least until we’re actually doing the mealtime thing).
But my dog still does the food bowl thing, and as my dog has a much better handle on when meal times actually are this is a nice reminder to me. She’s an old lady now, though, so if she’s napping or comfortable she sometimes won’t bother to grab her bowl and get my attention until she’s actually ready to get up.
One of my cats figured out that bugging her makes her get up, and that when she gets up she sometimes gets her food bowl, and when she gets her food bowl I initiate ‘feed the pets’ time. So sometimes he’ll just start meowing insistently and wrapping himself around her and following her from room to room on the off chance it will make dinner happen sooner.
This is how my cat learned to beg my dog for food.
My dog used to take shoes and bring them to her bed to chew on the shoelaces, which while mostly harmless (the worst she usually did was pull off an aglet) was rather annoying, especially when the shoes belonged to a guest.
So we taught her to ‘fetch’ and come give us whatever shes holding in exchange for a treat or food.
She now views shoes as currency that can be exchanged for food, and when she wants food (either because someone is eating and she wants it or because its dinner time and no ones fed her yet) shell go and find a shoe, bring it over, and drop it at your feet.
If you ignore her (as we’ve grown accustomed to doing), there are two outcomes: she picks up the shoe again, walks a few feet away, then comes back and drops it again. Or shell just go get more shoes.
I once walked in on my mom eating lunch with a pile of six (matching! She goes for pairs first) shoes sitting at the base of her chair, with a very hopeful Honey sitting just behind them.
