{the dog blog of Outside magazine}
You, Too, Can Train Your Dog to Fetch a Beer From the Fridge
by Grayson Schaffer | on October 22nd, 2009 | in Features, Training, Video Clips

Safety Note: If you're going to try this with a bottle, make sure your dog's hold is bulletproof.

Safety Note: If you're going to try this with a bottle, make sure your dog's hold is bulletproof.

Some folks were asking whether Danger can do that beer trick from last week’s short movie, “In the Face of Danger,” in one take. Yes, and chances are your dog can too. Training a dog to connect tricks or behaviors end to end is called chaining. Typically, these types of linked behaviors are taught back to front, or what’s called back-chaining. Basically, you start with the last part of the task, train that to proficiency, and then add the next-to-last part. Withhold your reward until the dog completes both of these well-polished tasks end to end. It won’t take him long to figure out that the criteria have been raised and he now has to do two tasks before the reward. Then add a third link in the chain and so on. When you see dogs performing complex, apparently human-like tasks on TV, this is generally how they’re taught.

OK, here’s the video.

How To Teach Your Dog To Fetch A Beer from Walker Parks on Vimeo.

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4 Responses to “You, Too, Can Train Your Dog to Fetch a Beer From the Fridge”

  1. TonyG829 says:
    October 22, 2009 at 5:29 PM

    Not gonna lie, I expected more from this article/video.

  2. Tweets that mention You, Too, Can Train Your Dog to Fetch a Beer From the Fridge – OutsideK9 -- Topsy.com says:
    October 23, 2009 at 4:35 PM

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by outsidemagazine, Louisa Chu, Mireya Mayor, Ph.D., Allison Otto, Rene` B. and others. Rene` B. said: Since Tess loves beer, Chip needs to teach her this RT @outsidemagazine Train Your Dog To Fetch A Beer. Video: http://bit.ly/KdKH9 [...]

  3. uberVU - social comments says:
    October 24, 2009 at 3:17 AM

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by AllisonOtto: funny how to teach your dog to fetch a beer video! http://bit.ly/3330cF…

  4. Dog Days « Small Dog on the Go says:
    October 25, 2009 at 9:40 PM

    [...] piece that I filmed that explains how it’s done in four easy steps. It’s called How to Teach Your Dog to Fetch a Beer and accompanies a training article on the Outside K9 website. Basically you can train your dog to [...]

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