What To Train When You Don’t Know What To Train: Pushing Stuff off Chairs (Let Chaos Reign!)

For the second installment in this series, we are sharing a how-to video with step by step written instructions and troubleshooting help, so that you can teach your dog to knock things off of chairs.

This year, we want to return to our roots and offer low pressure ways to have fun connecting with your dog. Enter the What to Train When You Don’t Know What to Train (WTTWYDKWTT … a winning acronym indeed) series! Each month, we’re delivering a variety of fun things you can train with your dog and following it up with tutorials (like this one!) delivered straight to your inbox. I was delighted that the very first video request within WTTWYDKWTT: The Chair Edition was for the “Pushing Stuff Off Chairs” activity. What I love about this game is that it’s fairly pointless, but in the best way, ya know? The journey is the destination. The goal is fun. The idea is chaos. Let’s go! (Okay, to be fair, this game has plenty of value – see below!)

Goal:

• Teach your dog to push an item off a chair when cued (and not when not cued – stimulus control - yay!)

Why Do This?

• Low pressure fun! You’re likely not going to need to cue this IRL, so it takes so much of the pressure off.

• Practice shaping, coming up with approximations, arranging conditions to make behavior likely, mechanics, etc.

• Build reinforcement history for working with you.

• Confidence building with new objects.

• Potential confidence building with sounds (depending on the object you pick) – do this slowly if you go this route.

Supplies:

• A chair

• Treats

• Some objects for your dog to push off chairs

  • I recommend starting with items that are easy to push off a chair but aren't likely to cue other non-target behaviors. For example, a ball rolls (easy to get it to move off a chair), but picking a ball your dog historically grabs in their mouth will make life harder. Items with certain textures may be harder to push off (hello, friction). Some items may make sounds that spook your dog. Just think through this one a bit. I used a small soccer ball my dog has never played with, random kids toys, baskets, and a book.

Location:

• Low distraction spot with some space for your dog to move around a chair

• A non-slip surface (like a rug) that won’t lead to loud crashing sounds when items fall

Steps & How-To Video

Become a paid subscriber [to our current paid subs, keep scrolling to the video and thank you!!!] to watch the full how-to video, read the written steps, and get troubleshooting advice below. As a paid subscriber, you can also comment directly on this post if you have questions and need any extra help training this. When you subscribe for eight dollars a month, you will gain access to all of our previous and future paid resources and so much more here on TOC's Substack.