Introduction
Teaching your dog to read flashcards is a bit of tricks training which is surprisingly easy to start. It’s great for bonding, for stretching the mind of younger dogs who have limited physical exercise as well as for certain breeds who may benefit from my challenging mental activities.
How To Start
The easiest way to start is to pick a few behaviours that your dog already knows really well from a purely verbal instruction and start with the easiest one of these. Dogs often rely on handsignals when they are learning and for this trick it’s helpful if they aren’t relying on these still. Often SIT is a good starting point. You’ll need to have a few flash card of roughly the same size, colour and shape and write in bold lettering your first few words e.g. SIT, DOWN and BED. Try to pick words that all look quite distinctive and behaviours which can’t be done at the same time.
“I made a mistake and started with puppy Annie with DOWN and WOOF which was a lot of ‘O’s and ‘W’s on the cards as well as two behaviours which can be delivered together, so I got a lot of woofy downs!“
It may also be helpful to use a clicker as this marks the exact moment the dog gives you the behaviour, as well as lots of treats and an environment relatively clear of distractions so they can really focus. Tricks training needs to light and fun and so always end before you’d like to and have a play with one of their favourite toys.
To start with just work on your first behaviour, say SIT and hold the flashcard and click and treat when they SIT. You may want to throw the treat away from you so that as they re-approach you can say SIT and show them the flashcard at the same time. After three or four repetitions try just holding the flashcard and waiting, follow with a verbal or physical hand signal if they don’t just give you the SIT. Once they’ve got the SIT from a flashcard I’d advise you to wait until your next training session.
At your next training session you can repeat all of the above but with the second behaviour e.g. DOWN until they’ve totally got it. Now you have two different behaviours with two very different looking words.
Developing This trick
At your next next training session repeat with alternating SITs and DOWNs in a random order. If you get an incorrect behaviour just ignore it and wait to see if they offer the correct behaviour, if they don’t go back and repeat the initial exercise with the words separately. Once they can correctly differentiate between these two you are up and running.
If anyone tries this exercise I’d love to see how you get on!