Payton the Amazing

This dog is awesome, and hilarious. I’ve posted a couple of times about our perch work. The last time he was on the perch was two or three days ago (I know, but I’m also working on other stuff, so we are actually rotating tricks…) He was going about a turn and a half for me, a turn regularly but often giving me more. I want him to be doing more than that before we start lowering the perch and then fade it out entirely, but he’s doing pretty good. The hand signal I’m using is Celeste Meade’s, which is a fist with my knuckles down towards the dog.

Well, I just had him in the bathroom with me while I was getting ready for bed. I wanted to put him in a sit so I said “Payton, sit,” and made the hand signal I use, which is scooping my hand up towards my face. Normally I have my hand open, palm up, but I was holding something so it was basically raising my fist up in the air. He looked at my hand but didn’t sit right away, so I just waited. Sit is his default behaviour so I knew he would sit in a second anyway once his brain caught up to his feet.
Except he didn’t sit.
He stared at my hand, which was a fist, knuckles down… and he thought about it, then proceeded to start pivoting his butt around.

I looked at him, totally shocked, then looked at my hand, and realized he was doing EXACTLY what I asked him to. Just not what I MEANT to ask him to do!
And he did it without the perch anywhere nearby and without having done any kind of fading of the perch. Just up and turned a pivot on the bathroom floor.

I then almost fell over laughing hysterically. Really, Payton? Wow. Okay.
Now I don’t know if I should just ditch the perch and make him start doing pivots without it since he already proved to me he can, haha.