Crawl

For my last blog post, I chose to teach Shasta to crawl. To some people, "crawl" sounds like it would be a easy task. But to Shasta, poor thing was struggling so much. During the time it took to teach her to crawl, she whined, she got confused, and she out-right gave up at one point. She constantly thought I was trying to get her to roll over. In the book it suggested that I should position one of my hands over her shoulder. That helped, but it also confused her into rolling over instead.
We practiced this trick over and over again until she finally started to figure out that she needed to inch forward, towards the treat in my hand. The quote from the book that helped the most with this trick is "Hold the treat level with his nose- if you hold it any higher, it will cause him to pop up to get the treat. Let him sniff the treat, then move it just out of his reach so he must stretch to get to your hand."(Fogle 36)
 Fogle, Jean M. Tricks for Treats. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.      
Holding my hand(with the treat) nose level in front of her helped her start to inch forward and make progress. The more we practiced and she inched forward, I moved my had a bit further away from her, causing her to crawl forward towards my hand. Shasta is very smart but has very little confidence in anything. Is teaching her tricks boosting her confidence?