Okay, my clients generally fall into two catagories:

1. People who want basic obedience for pet dogs (most people fall into this catagory).

2. People who want basic and intermediate obedience as a primer for competition.

Today I was talking to a client from the #2 camp, and he was wondering if it was a good idea to stay away from a lot of "parlor tricks" if you're planning on doing serious work with your dog. By "parlor tricks" I mean those cute crowd pleasers like "say your prayers" and "bow" and "spin" and "give kisses" and the like.

He has a young GSD that his 8 year old daughter is afraid of and he thought if he taught the dog some of those cute tricks she'd lose her fear, but his goal with the dog is competition obedience.

It's odd, but I've never had anyone from the #2 camp ever want that sort of thing before. They're always more business-like.

In my client's specific case, I'm sure that teaching the dog a few cute tricks isn't going to interfere with his formal training...but I got to thinking that, speaking generally, a potential problem with too many of them might be that a dog can only reliably follow so many commands at any one given point in time.

I think they can learn probably hundreds over the course of a lifetime, but how many can you expect excellent performance and fast obedience on?


Has this been discussed before and I'm missing it? Does anyone have any links to any studies that have been done, or personal experience?

Amber,
I recall a dog that had over 400 commands committed to long term memory. I can't remember where I saw it on TV, maybe animal planet. Might be in the guiness book of world records.

Amber I don't think teaching a dog "tricks" will affect anything else he does with anything he does in the future with his dog.Go for it..

 Quote: amber morgan

In my client's specific case, I'm sure that teaching the dog a few cute tricks isn't going to interfere with his formal training...but I got to thinking that, speaking generally, a potential problem with too many of them might be that a dog can only reliably follow so many commands at any one given point in time.

Angelique, I'm not worried about this particular case, but that's what got me thinking about it. If you had a dog that was highly trained and needed to have as much dead-on accuracy as possible, would teaching it enough froo-froo tricks take away anything?

That would really depend on how many a commands a dog can "store" with instant access. So is it limitless? 400 max like James heard? Obviously differences would exist from dog to dog, but in general?

How many commands would you say your best trained dog can respond instantly to tonight, for example? How many more can you train him to do before he starts to forget some?

All else being equal in terms of training, why, or better yet, HOW would a dog distinguish between your pejorative human perception of "tricks" and "serious training"?

I wasn't saying the dog could distinguish between the two! Well, maybe *your* dog can.

I was saying that's why the question is even relevant (beyond the hypothetical fun of it all, that is).

Based on my vast personal experience training one dog to do both Schutzhund and froo-froo tricks, I believe the silly tricks actually increased my dog's attentiveness and trainability. I started them when he had Pano and I couldn't work him regular obedience. To keep him (and me) from going bonkers, I did low-impact fun stuff in the house. The more I taught him, the faster he seemed to learn new things. Either he was learning to learn, or I was learning to teach. We both have a blast doing it, and I think we bonded even more, to boot. Oh, and when he was okay again and we resumed training, his attention and enthusiasm were better than before. So, extrapolating my one data point to the rest of the canine population, I don't think it hurts at all. And in the client's case, maybe he could, once the dog is trained, get his daughter to do the tricks with the dog - it may help them both (dog and daughter) bond.

There was an article in Science magazine by someone in the psychology department at Yale (I think) in 2004 about this.

It concluded that an adult dog of the most intelligent breeds (Border Collies, Poodles, GSDs, etc.) could have the capacity to know 200 one-word commands (or 200 indentifying words, like toy or food names, or a combination). In fact, the author studied a Border who did indeed have 200 words in his ken.

I don't still have it, and I don't remember how it was studied. All I remember clearly was that it was 200 words, either commands or nouns or both.

Even if that applied only to the most intelligent individuals of the most intelligent breeds, it made me think that dogs could learn a lot more than they are usually taught.

Maybe someone else saved it.

 Quote: AnitaGard

Based on my vast personal experience training one dog to do both Schutzhund and froo-froo tricks, I believe the silly tricks actually increased my dog's attentiveness and trainability. ...

I'm with you.

The more you use it, the better it works. JMO!

I think if you have a "teachable" dog, then the sky's the limit as far as learning. But it may be a bit like high school spanish - you get a bit rusty if you don't use it for a few years, but it comes back to you with a bit of practice.

ETA - I think my Border Collie has about 75 words she responds appropiately to (a command, persons name, other pets name, certain toy).