What should be your response when a pup chooses to do one of her other tricks instead of the one you are asking for? Its beautiful, but not the right one.
Pooka is very smart and learns tricks well. She's currently 7 months.
She knows: sit, lie down, kisses, roll over, shake, speak, spin around, high five, jump up, fetch, drop it, play dead, walk-around-me
We're working on back-up and stand-up. (we are holding off on stand-up now cuz we don't want to hurt her back while she's still growing).
If they don't do the one you're asking, do you say "No/Uh-uh" (negative) cuz its not the one you asked for? Or do you say "good [trick-she-actually-did]".
Currently I've been doing the negative cuz she's such a pa-toot! She'll do all her favorite/easy tricks instead of the harder ones. But I worry that... then she'll think its bad to do that trick?
There was a while she hated to roll-over and she'd always spin around instead. Now she is great, and maybe it wasn't laziness, it was just needing to work on her understanding the words. When she doesn't know what words I'm saying, I think she does some random tricks cuz she really wants the treat.
That's the realization that kind've made me start thinking maybe I shouldn't be negative and I just don't know the proper way to handle this.