Teach Your Yorkie to Recognize His Name With These Obedience Tips

Series Summary

Man has long had a unique relationship with the animals on this planet. We’ve kept them as beasts of burden, to carry loads and draw carriages. We’ve also trained them to herd or hunt other animals. Yet, perhaps as a gentler development from this history, we have begun to bring animals into our homes, to domesticate and care for them, and to call them friends.

Over time, dogs have proven to be well-adapted for human life, expressing qualities of loyalty and bravery, and responding to commands. Since dogs are inherently wild animals, they all need some sort of obedience training to become accustomed to their surroundings and the rules of your home. The most difficult part of this process is communicating with your dog in a civil, non-violent manner, asserting authority without aggression. By praising positive behavior and correcting or ignoring negative behavior, you are able to show your pet what is acceptable without using fear. This helps create a loving relationship between you and your dog.

In this free Yorkshire Terrier obedience video series, a expert dog trainer will show you many tips, techniques, and tricks to use to teach your dog to take commands. Lessons include how to train your Yorkie to sit, teach your dog to stay, recognize his name, and lie down.

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Melanie McLeroy with Taurus Training for Expert Village and today we’re going talk about training dogs. Yorkshire Terriers are wonderful little dogs and very affectionate and high energy and make great companions, but keep in mind that they’re still Terriers so they have a feisty little personality. It’s very important to teach your Yorkshire Terrier from a young age to pay attention and let you set the tone for your household. If you haven’t yet already, please check out the pre-training videos before you start working with your little Yorkie. This is little Tuffy, he’s very, very cute and sweet. Now Tuffy is too interested in my treat bag, so I’m going to move it out of the way and start working on him learning his name. I want to say his name in a high pitched voice and when he makes eye contact with me, then I mark it and give him a treat. Now, I don’t want to do it now because I’d be setting him to up to fail, I need to bring him back around here, Tuffy, now he needs some help. He has no idea what I want. So I can either wait for him to look at me, nope, that was a cheat or I can make a little noise to help him out …good. So I want sustained eye contact I don’t want just a little flick of an eyeball, now I want to teach him to move a little more quickly, so I’m actually going to move the food from his nose up to my eyes to help him know that is what I want him to do. Tuffy, …good, very nice… yummy cheese. Tuffy … good. I’m going to switch hands Tuffy … good so there I tried to see if he had gotten the idea yet, but he hadn’t, so he still needs a little help. I really want to fade that signal moving my hand up to my eyes pretty quickly, though so I can get a little closer Tuffy… good, we’re running short on time. So let me explain the progression of what would happen next. Little Tuffy will start making eye contact quicker and quicker, you want to fade that little visual signal by moving your hand in different areas and really rewarding when he looks at you, then you won’t be using any visual signals at all and you start making your reinforcement random and that’s how to teach your Yorkshire Terrier to pay attention to you."