we have really been working with iorek on new tricks to get his brain going. he is very smart. now he is offering behaviours so i am really happy about that. when we did obedience with him we really did it for socialization and he had a really hard time focusing and he shut down a lot. but he is much more comfortable with us now and he really is showing us what he can do. long story short, when we got him from the breeder he had not even been outside the door and he was 4 1/2 months! so he was very well versed in "doggish" but nothing else. he has come a long way in the last 8 months.
in the past 2 weeks i have taught him to roll over, up and off (off being the most important - even though he doesn't usually jump on people, just in case), also we have been working on leave it (he is doing fantastic!), and yesterday i taught him to give me his paw. i have been trying to teach him that for so long now because my old landlady always asks him to give her his paw so i wanted him to do it for her. he just wasn't getting it, but then yesterday he offered it on his own so we threw a party
and he has been doing great since!! we are working on "the other one" now and he is doing well with that too. i am going to teach him to turn left and right in a circle next. we worked on it a little this morning.
so, after all of that i finally get to the original question!! haha! i want to teach him names for his toys. my dogs growing up always knew the names of their toys but i don't know how we did it. i guess we just had a name for all of them and used it all the time. we didn't have names for iorek's toys so far since he has toys like "rope toy" and "bone", haha. my sister's dog has toys called "moomoo" and stuff like that, so i guess it just comes easier when you have toys that are not so generic.
how can i name the toys now? i was thinking i would take a toy and put it in front of him and say the name and give it to him. i don't know. what do you think? he also is not super toy driven so that may make it a little harder too.
oh, we are also working on go find daddy/mommy and we are going to add go find blue/frodo (the cats)
thanks for any advice
