Prewash shows off: dog skills!

Her first summer: being at the top
of a flight of stairs terrified her, and
she couldn't follow me down.

When we brought Prewash home a year and a half ago, she knew basically only one command (more on that below).  She didn't know her name, of course; she thought I was torturing her when I tried to teach her how to "sit"; she couldn't even go up and down stairs.   In fact, when I went upstairs from the living room, she sat at the bottom of the stairs and wailed, like I was a prophet ascending into the clouds.

But I've been working with her really regularly, and she's now ready to brag on her training accomplishments.  Here's what Prewash can do nowadays.  Drum roll, anyone?

Maintenance:

• Crate:  This is the one thing she had down already when she joined our household: Prewash crates just beautifully.  We feed her in the crate in the morning before I leave for work, and she waits there contentedly pretty much all day until someone comes home, when she wakes up, stretches, and then bounces her way out.

• Dog door:  In an astounding feat of learned stair-dom, she can now trundle down the stairs into the basement, wend her way into the utility room, scramble up the special home-made dog stairs, squeeze herself through the dog door into the window well, and jump from there up into the yard where her dog run is.    She does her duty outside, and then returns back from whence she came.
  
  She does this in all kinds of weather, which means we don't have to walk her in the rain or snow.  Super!

Etiquette

• Sit: She sits on command, but also knows to sit automatically before we put on her leash or when we're ready to take it off.  
• Down:  What to say?  She knows "down".  Good dog.
• Heel: She walks slack-leash with me now, with a couple of reminders still needed, but getting better all the time. 
• Stay:  I can leave the room, with food on the floor in front of her, and she'll "stay" anyway if I've told her to do so.  I try not to be cruel like that too often, though, especially because she drools on the carpet if I wait too long.
• Drop:  As in "drop the toy".  I use mostly when we're playing fetch, but also when she grabs the toy that A-child is taunting her with and we have to get it back.

Tricks

• Paw: (as in "shake hands").  For some reason I don't understand, this took her for-ev-er to learn.  She knew I was trying to teach her something and she'd earnestly try just about everything she could think of to try to get the training treat, but just couldn't give me her paw without me picking up for her.   We practiced for 5-10 minutes every day for weeks before something clicked and she finally got it.
• Belly up: This took her exactly half a training session to learn.  She loves having her belly rubbed!  The majority of the maintenance training for this command nowadays is teaching her not to go belly-up when I say "down".  
• Say please:  I'd love to teach her to sit on her haunches and "beg" on command.  So far, I've taught her to stay on her haunches (that is, not to jump up) while she lifts her front paws, but she still needs me to catch and hold her paws so she can balance.  
• Poop here:  I'm saving my favorite for last, because I think it's hilarious.  On our walk to the dog park, there's a trash can we pass by.  I've trained her NOT to poop before then, but to poop on command right next to the trash can (on the newspaper I've brought along).  Clean up is super-easy.  

Future?

• Say please:  I still want to work on this, to see if we can perfect it.
• Speak (?):  She does't bark, not even when strangers are at the door.  I kind of like that, but it makes her pretty sucky as a guard dog.  I'm not sure how to teach her to speak on demand because she so seldom makes any noise, so it's not going to be easy to naturally reward her for it.  (It's the opposite problem of many dog owners, and I'm really grateful that my problem goes in this direction and not in the "how do I keep my dog from disturbing the neighbors?" direction).    I'm perusing videos for suggestions . . . I think this'll be next.
  
  Update:  You-Tube is awesome!  We've done three
  short training sessions, and she's making
  awesome progress already!
• Other?  She seems to love our training sessions and learning new tricks, so I'm definitely open to suggestions people might have.