When I met Lacy, she knew three words. Her name, her former owner’s name (Greg), and “food”. She was six years old. Greg would communicate to Lacy via a series of clicks. He had one for wait, one for release, and probably several others.
He never taught us the clicks.
Lacy learned “wait” very quickly. He would click at her when he poured her food, and make her wait until the release click. We used the same tactic with the word “wait”, and she picked it up with no effort.
Over the following six years, we taught her the following commands. Some of these she would later forget. Like a Pokemon, Lacy could only maintain a limited moveset, and had to forget old tricks in order to learn new ones.
A partial list of tricks and commands lacy knew (at once point)
Tricks
- Sit
- Wait
- Lie down
- Roll over
- Spin. Later in her life, she forgot roll over and learned spin. I suspect the hand signs were too similar.
- Put ‘em up. Lacy would raise her paws while laying on her back. She never truly mastered this one, but it was a crowd pleaser when she pulled it off.
Commands
- Ah-ah-ah. Similar to wait.
- Crossing. Run across the street like a bat outta hell. Previously, Lacy would meander lazily across the street, or stop in the middle for a lie-down on the hot pavement. Dangerous!
- Inside. Lacy loved splitting the pole. Any time on our walks where she could put a tree, pole, or other obstacle between her and me, she would. Inside taught her to heel, or stick by my side. Eventually she stopped needing this one very much, as she picked it up on her own.
- Untangle. After her frolics1, Lacy’s leash would wrap around her body and legs. With a command of “untangle”, Lacy would lift each of her paws in turn, allowing me to thread the leash out from around her. She had this one down pat, but seemed to forget it in her last couple years.
Other words
- Car ride
- Treat
- Walk
- Lacy also knew the name of several of her favorite toys and stuffed animals.
Sometimes Courtney would say “go find your dad”. Lacy would seek me out, fully confident that my name was “Yerdad”.
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On our walks, there was one yard Lacy would stop at, usually on her second her third lap, and either sploot down on their lawn for a breather, or roll around with reckless abandon, thrashing on her back and head. Then, after a minute, she would get up, shake herself off gently once, and proceed on her walk with an entirely unearned air of dignity.2. ↩
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Part of the reason we adopted “Benzo”3 is that his adoption paperwork said he would roll around in certain yards on his walk. This, and several other behaviors reminded me of our dear Lacy. On our very first walk together, he stopped in her yard and gave it a good frolic. I haven’t seen him do it since. He came with a pair, a great Pyrenese (Benzo himself is half Pyr half Golden Retriever), so now we have 200 lbs of dog in the house. Lacy left too big a hole for one dog to fill. ↩
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He came with this name. We have since lengthened it to Benzamin Diazepene. I usually call him Gavilar. ↩