Training Butters After Going Blind

[EveryoneLovesButters]

Before Butters went blind, he was never formally or informally trained but we've had to hit it pretty hard the past three months. He now knows about ten commands that help him do everything from get off the bed to go up and down stairs. Up until now, I've only taught him essential things he needed to get around, but now that I know he's capable of learning with the command/action/clicker/reward system, I decided to see if I could train him to perform a couple of actions by touch.

I got a fresh bag of training treats and gave it a go with today. Just like before, I was really surprised at how quick he caught on. In less than an hour he learned that a tap on his lower back means sit and a touch on his left shoulder means lay down. He also had to learn something to get back up, so "on your feet!" is a thing now too.

To reinforce a bunch of his actions, I've stringed together a line of things for him to do in our room. It starts with me saying, "off the bed!" where he goes to the bottom left corner of our bed and goes down his pet steps. Then it's "come see daddy" and he walks around two sides of the bed and comes under my desk and sits down. Today we added the touch on his shoulder to make him lay down and the "on your feet!" to get back up. Then its "find your stairs" to get him back on the bed via his pet steps to do it all over again.

A lot of this stuff has helped him feel confident navigating around our room, our house and new places. The first day he came home, he learned "CAREFUL!" really quickly and knew that we only said that to keep him from walking into or falling off of something. From then, I think he knows these commands are to help him and has been more than willing to learn new things. I'm so proud of our boy!

[Tinker's mom]

Awesome!

[Nina_W]

That's awesome! Training tricks is cute and all, but I love it when training makes life better :)