You can teach a dog new tricks: why your pooch really needs its own iPad

Getting your pooch to roll over or catch a Frisbee is dogfood. If they want to keep up with those bitches in New York, they need to work an iPad and take a selfie, says Lucy Tobin
MUST CREDIT: Rebecca Reid
13 March 2014

The selfie is a touch blurred, and the photographer has missed most of her own head from the frame. But it’s nothing worse than the average upload to Instagram after a few mojitos into a Saturday night.

Except this selfie was immortalised by the cold, wet snout of Domino, my niece-dog, on an iPad. And once she’d snapped herself, she sketched some Monet-esque (if you squint and really want to see it) art. Domino, you see, is the first dog in London to try out the latest US pooch craze: iPad lessons for dogs. Seriously.

The provenance of the trend, and of the girls bringing it to the capital, is obvious from their first question to Domino’s owner, my sister Anna. “Does she have any allergies?” ask New Yorkers Nicole Stott, the founder of Shoreditch’s City Dog, and her childhood friend Anna Jane Grossman, who launched iPad lessons for dogs in NYC last summer.

Domino is a six-month-old collie-cross rescued from a Bristol family who couldn’t cope with her. She doesn’t have any allergies. Discipline-wise, she’s been known to swipe food from the kitchen and doesn’t miss an opportunity to sneak upstairs (officially forbidden territory) to lick awake any snoozing humans.

So it’s fair to say it’s a surprise when, after half an hour in the company of the two so-passionate-it’s-a-little-scary dog-trainers, Domino does indeed know her way around an iPad. You would hope so, given the workshop costs £150 for 90 minutes.

But it’s not as wacky as it sounds, according to Scott, a former Nasa physicist who moved to London in 2003. In the States she was working on a jet propulsion lab for Nasa but loved dogs and switched to becoming an apprentice for a police and guide dog-trainer and a “pet behaviourist” before opening City Dog here in 2007.

“Dogs who are trained to do something — anything, be it an iPad, agility, or how to skateboard [that’s another course coming to London’s pooches later this year] — have a lower incidence of anxiety and aggression,” Scott says. “Pets who are engaged with their owners through performing tricks are better behaved and know their boundaries. Yes, a dog playing on an iPad is silly but it has a purpose, and it’s a way of having super fun with your pet.”

So how do you teach a dog to use an iPad? It’s all about Pavlovian conditioning, apparently. Or, in dog lingo: do what these crazy humans want and get sausage.

We start with a fake wooden iPhone: every time Domino nuzzles it (pretty often since it’s smeared in peanut butter) she hears a click and gets a treat. Next we switch to a real iPad and download some apps, like the Magic 8 Ball-esque yes/no app: touching the screen generates a random “yes” or “no”. Domino’s big (human) sisters Ella and Lily get very worried when her nose pushes “no” to the question: Are you an Arsenal fan?

iPaws - in pictures

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There’s a dog-treat currency: dry kibbles are “worth about 50p” while Domino’s big achievements — like that selfie — are rewarded with roast chicken and chunks of hotdog.

Once Domino really gets the connection between the clicking noise and tapping the iPad, she’s on to her selfies and doodling. The techniques learnt, apparently, will help her deal with such problems as her fervent hatred of cars.

Clients at City Dog (where one-off consultancies cost £75, or long-term “bespoke training” starts at £2,000) include “people who want to spoil their dogs by giving them time rather than just buying them junk”, says Scott. “There’s everyone from little old ladies living on council estates whose dogs are their world to pets in Kensington mansions.”

Grossman whips out a video of her own poodle-Yorkie mix, Amos. A seasoned selfie-taker, his artwork has led to neighbours calling him Picasso. And he even seems to be able to read one-word instructions as they flash up on the iPad. We’d thought Domino was doing so well but this is like parental one-upmanship at the school gates.

“Domino could get to that level,” Grossman maintains. “Any dog can be turned into a Lassie. You can even teach a goldfish how to do tricks and I’ve got a pig as a client in New York. People have crazy pets there.”

The iPad Masterclass takes place in Shoreditch on Saturday, cost £150, city-dog.co.uk/ipad- masterclass.php. schoolforthedogs.com

APPY DOGS

These canine computer games are all available from the iTunes app store.

Yes|No

Ask your dog a question and wait for their response.

App for Dog

Puppy painting.

Big Words

Teach your pooch to read.

Big Camera Button

For all your pet-selfie needs.

iClicker

Turn your iPhone into a free dog-training device.

Virtuoso

Turn Rover into Rachmaninov.

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