Let’s go to Bed

I’m really impressed with my current crop of Saturday students … all three of them are masters at the “go to bed” cue, which is both a helpful household behavior as well as an awesome, impressive party trick! Take my 8:00 student, Aggie. She struggled with the bed lesson for the first two weeks (“Huh? You want me to lay on this thing right here?”), but then something clicked and now she’s a pro. Her people say “Bed!” and she races to it, and better yet, waits on it patiently: My next client, Milly, figured out the “bed” game immediately, and she’s now doing graduate-level work … her person can disappear into the kitchen, say “Bed!” and Milly dashes around the corner to it . When she really wants to prove that she’s On The Bed, she’ll drop her head between her paws as if to say “I’m SO on it!” My final client of the day, little Rocky, still hangs out in his crate when his people aren’t home, so we taught him to go there when we ask. Rocky’s people can send him to his crate from the next room: There’ such a “Ta-da” element to this behavior that I can’t help clapping every time one of my canine students nails it.