In honour of Hallowe’en, Baxter wants to show you his tricks.
Dude does love his treats.
Happy Hallowe’en from Baxter (and Matt and me). Haaaaaa-woooooo! (That was a howl).
What tricks does your dog know? Any suggestions of what tricks Baxter should learn? Any training tips to share?
Check out last year’s Hallowe’en post, our Drac-o-Lantern, here.
Home on 129 Acres 
haha this is awesome! I am really starting to love all of the Baxter updates!
Thanks! I wasn’t sure whether people would miss the regular farm updates. I have lots of fun Baxter stories, but I’m trying to not turn this into a dog blog.
Awww, I love it! Great job Baxter! Treu can sit, shake, and lay down. And can lay down with just a hand signal (no commands). He’s 10 now and I know an old dog can learn new tricks, but I wish I had worked with him more as a pup!
I’d love to teach Baxter shake, but I’m trying to figure out how to do it without confusing him. We ask for “feet” when we come in from outside, and he gives us each of his feet to wipe them off. It’s very similar to shake a paw, so I need to come up with a different scenario or a different command that helps him differentiate between “feet” and “shake.”
Baxter is so cute! I love the Baxter updates. My daughter taught our dog to give high fives many years ago – if you say five and hold up your hand Callie our dog will high five you with her paw. So cute and it only took her a couple of hours to teach her.
Thanks for the comment. I’ve shared it with Baxter and he says thank you as well.
OH MY GOSH!!! Baxter is so cute!!!!!!! I love the crawl trick!!! Luther can do a few (besides sit, lay down and stay). We taught him how to give us a paw when he comes inside the house (so we can clean it) and also a handshake. He actually knows the difference between the two and gives the right paw when asked for a handshake. He also knows how to do a spin and we almost have him rolling over. It’s so much fun teaching them these things,isn’t it?
Luther sounds like a smart cookie. It’s fun as well as great bonding to teach them tricks, I think.
Aww, that is one happy and engaged doggie! We do shake-a-paw with Bear for both cleaning from outside and for no reason, just shake. He does it either way, I’m sure he puts it down to the vagaries of humans that we sometimes busily clean his paws and other times just smile and give him treats! He also does high five, and will sit with a treat on his nose until we give the signal. He’s caught it a couple of times, but now the lazy boy just drops his head so it slides off his nose, then picks it up and eats it.
My nephews tried to do the treat on the nose trick. I tried to explain that they had to work up to it a little more gradually rather than expecting Bax to just let them set a treat on his nose when no one has ever asked him to do that before. Bear sounds like a smartie. I love that he’s not expending too much effort to get the treat in the end. That sounds a lot like Bax, actually.
Yeah, he has this way of communicating, even if he is obliging, doing what we ask and not barking and so on.
Adorable! What a cutie. Curious what type of treat you are using? You mentioned that sometimes treats are not enough motivation for your guy… try stepping up your ‘level’ (cheese is more valuable than dog food, hot dog may be more valuable than cheese, etc.) Looks like you have a great relationship with Baxter!
We’ve been really cautious about introducing other foods, so for crawl and speak we use kibble. That could be why he’s not always motivated. He does love cheese, so maybe I’ll give that a try. Thanks.
That tail! 🙂
Always, always the tail!