Teach Crawl

One of my favorite tricks has always been the 'crawl.' Bonnie learned the crawl over a period of weeks and now has a really smooth and comfortable trick to share with friends.

I started out by having Bonnie lie down while I was on the ground next to her. Then, holding a treat in front of her nose, I moved the treat away from her so that she would follow it while staying on the ground. Most dogs try to get up to retrieve the treat and Bonnie did as well. When she lifted her rear end, I gently tapped it and showed her to put it back down on the ground. Out of desire for the treat, she scooted just slightly forward. As soon as she did, I praised her wildly and gave her the treat. She had just crawled a tiny bit. We practiced this over and over, for two or three minutes a couple of times each day.

The hardest part of teaching a dog to crawl is the transition you have to make from sitting on the ground to standing next to your dog. Here's how I did it. I found a yardstick. Then I taped a small plastic cup to the very bottom of the stick. I put several pieces of tasty treats in the cup. Then, while standing, I held the yardstick in front of Bonnie's nose and coaxed her to crawl. Once she was used to crawling with my standing up she became comfortable crawling in any situation. Check out Bonnie's video. I think you'll see that with this method, crawling is a trick that you can teach your dog without too much trouble. Have fun!

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