Astounding California Border Collies Set a Guinness World Record for Most Dog Tricks
Courtesy of kikopup / Instagram
Quick! What can you accomplish in just 60 seconds? Exceptional border collies Wish and Halo can do 28 tricks in that time and as a result, set a new Guinness world record for "most tricks performed by two dogs in one minute".
(And we thought we were accomplishing something special by pouring a cup of coffee with one hand while scrolling Insta with the other!)
Wish and Halo are part of trainer Emily Larlham's pack in El Cajon, Calif. She started her career 15 years ago as a shelter animal caregiver. Now an internationally-renowned speaker, educator, and dog behaviorist, she specializes in training dogs without intimidation through her company, Dogmantics.
In her interview with Daily Paws, Larlham said striving for a world record was a "great way to spread the message about positive reinforcement training, and greatly reinforced by [Guinness World Records] sharing brief information on how I trained using this method." To prepare for the December 2020 event, she says it was a challenge to not only ask Wish and Halo to do tricks simultaneously but also much faster than they had done before.
"The rules were that they had to be by my side doing tricks, so there were a few tricks I had to retrain or train from scratch for the record," she says. "Because there were so many done in such quick succession, I asked for only a few at a time during the training process, such as asking for the last five tricks, or five tricks from the middle of the sequence. It took a couple of months to get the new tricks trained to include in the sequence."
Larlham and her pair of pups make a fantastic, synchronized team—check out these record winners in this exciting Guinness World Records video!
"I was thrilled when they got through the whole sequence of tricks!" Larlham says. "The hardest part was for me to remember the order to ask the tricks, and ask for them so quickly!" It's easy to see how excited the dogs are, too.
Guinness also notes that Wish earned another record: he executed the fastest 5 m crawl by a dog at 2.175 seconds.
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Larlham shares her passion for better human and dog connections on her YouTube channel, Dog Training by Kikopup, with the help of Wish and Halo, along with their pals Kiko, Splash, and Tug. Hundreds of videos address various training concerns and provide positive solutions.
If you're looking for a few easy tricks to help you bond and provide engagement with your dog, she recommends one of her most popular tutorials featuring 20 trick options.
