Greetings from Australia

[Nanno]

Yes, Cuzco does several tricks. I train most of my goats to do basic tricks like "Shake hands," "Spin," and "Dance." All of the boys and one of the girls will also go down on their knees and "Repent!" (always a huge crowd pleaser). Cuzco is the only one who knows how to do the one-knee bow. This was tricky for him since all his life I'd taught him that he must go down on BOTH knees to get a cookie. He would sometimes try to be lazy and just do one knee and I never rewarded that, so it was confusing for him at first to be told I only wanted one knee down. That's why it took two weeks. Normally he can learn a trick faster if I work on it every day. You find that once they "learn to learn" they pick up new tricks pretty quickly if you are consistent.

I'm currently just using the treats and praise method, but I have a clicker which I should probably get comfortable using. I'm teaching the younger boys "Whoa" (same as "Stay" for a dog) and to ground tie. I just today started teaching my young boys to nod their heads "Yes". I'm hoping they'll be able to learn to answer Yes/No questions by watching my hand signals. We'd love to do little circus acts for birthday parties and such. My husband is also dreaming up magic tricks that we can do with goats. They can be his lovely and mischievous assistants.