[DriveDog]

You probably already taught it to your dog but the wave good-bye and hello is always a classic which gets a grin out of most everyone. I incorporate a lot of hand signals in my training so the wave goodbye/ hello works great this way as I tell the younger kids my dog knows many languages and you can wave at my dog and tell her hello/goodbye in any language you know. Of course, she cues on the hand gesture but it takes the kids and some adults a while to figure it out.

Just the other day when I was out with my dog for our daily bike ride, I stopped at an intersection to wait for traffic. The dog always takes a sit position when I stop walking/biking automatically and this lady saw this and started waving and smiling at my dog from her car and my dog "waved" back at her, she lost it and busted out laughing as did I.

 

[DriveDog]

@DriveDog - Aspen knows 'paw' but not how to wave. It sounds like that was a hysterical situation! Haha... how did you teach it?

I'm guessing my girl's "wave" is more of a "paw" as it lacks the side to side motion so it's more of a repeated pawing with her front leg staying elevated throughout the motions.

As I recall, I just built on the shake to a high five into the hello/goodbye wave. Each motion had it's own hand signal along with a verbal command in the beginning. The height which the dog brings their paw to, seems to be the defining difference between the three commands with the shake being the lowest as well as the shake and high five making contact with the human's hand. The wave seemed to be a natural progression without having to make contact with my hand. If your dog already knows to "paw" at the air and hold the leg elevated, I suppose all you need is a hand gesture to cue the dog to "paw" or 'wave". Once my dog reacted to the hand gesture, I faded out the verbal cue even though I would throw in an "au revoir", "auf wiedersehen" "goodbye" etc. at times. I could say "zucchini" during the hand signal to wave and get the same result but most others don't know that too quickly.

 

[DriveDog]

I think this is it?

The "Crazy Talking Aussie" video is great. Levi is loving it.

 

[DriveDog]

Leg weaves question!

How do I transition from luring her with my hand through my legs to removing the lure?

I don't know that the method I used is standard since I just kind of winged it on my own but I used verbal cues with a lure in the beginning. I would lure the dog through my legs while taking an exaggerated slower step forward and say zig while luring the dog through. I stayed on this simple process and then added in the zag after she knew the zig. I tend to use more hand signals and body signals than verbal cues but for this training behavior I thought it best to stick with a verbal cue since I didn't want her weaving every time I walk with her. I somewhat believe that my dog keys on my length of stride because when we weave, I have to take larger than normal steps because she's a larger breed dog. So, between the verbal cue and my longer than normal stride, she has more than enough indication as to what she should do.

Don't know if this helps but it has worked for me.