Teaching your dog new tricks is no easy feat, but this trainer from El Cajon, California, makes it seem like a breeze. In fact, she has trained her dogs so well that they made it to the Guinness World Records!
Emily Larlham’s two border collies, Wish and Halo, recently set the world record for the most tricks performed by two dogs in one minute. The duo performed an impressive 28 tricks within that period.
The record-keeping organization also announced that Wish broke the world record for the fastest 5-meter crawl by a dog. The pup achieved the feat within a quick 2.175 seconds.
The team completed the tricks and submitted them to Guinness for approval on December 22.
Emily used positive reinforcement training to teach Wish and Halo different tricks. Her strategy involved breaking the steps into easy-to-follow instructions so the dogs can learn the behaviors easily.
If one pup makes a mistake, Emily would further break up the steps so that the dogs have a better chance at performing them successfully.
As for the tricks that Wish and Halo should do together, Emily makes the criteria easier during the first time, so they will get the idea that working with each other meant getting more treats as opposed to working alone.
With the help of toys, Emily added speed to the behaviors so that the pups get used to performing more tricks within a short period. Luckily, Wish and Halo are intelligent, healthy, and athletic, so they actually enjoyed learning these moves.
Emily spent a long time gaining the dogs’ trust and building a relationship with them using this teaching method, and it proved to be effective.
Emily is a speaker and is popular among dog training groups in the world. She runs the dog training business Dogmantics Dog Training in San Diego, California. She also has a YouTube channel called “Dog Training by Kikopup,” where she has shared over 350 free and in-depth dog training tutorials.
“I’m not going to feed you want you want to hear to get more views. I am going to tell you the honest truth about dog training even though it means you might need to put in a little effort to train your dog. However, I break the training up into small achievable steps so training should be fun and easy for both you and your dog giving you the skills needed to train your dog like a professional trainer,” Emily wrote about her dog training tutorials.
Before venturing into dog training as a full-time career, Emily worked as an animal caregiver in a shelter about 15 years ago. It was there that she met her dog training mentor, Kyle Rayon. After meeting him, Emily resigned from her job and became his apprentice.
After years of studying and learning from both humans and thousands of canine mentors, Emily launched her own business. She was able to use her artistic background and the training skills she acquired to come up with creative, reliable, and quick ways to solve problematic behavior among dogs and teach them complex behaviors and tricks.
This extraordinary dog trainer coined the term “progressive reinforcement training. It means “teaching by reinforcing and training desired behaviors, interrupting and preventing undesirable behaviors without the intentional use of physical or psychological intimidation and taking into consideration the learner’s physical health and emotional state.”
Emily believes this method of teaching will encourage people to treat both animals and humans with more compassion.
Wish and Halo have three other siblings—Kiko, Tug, and Splash—who are regularly featured in Emily’s dog training tutorial videos.
Check out the video below to see the world record-setting performance of these two border collies.