Who Said "You Can't Teach An Old Dog New Tricks"?

The answer to the last beagle puzzle is...
"You can't teach an old dog new tricks".

The clues were:
1)Me doing a new trick (catching a kibble mid-air); and
2) The verse "At the ripe age of seven", which in human terms is close to 50 years old!

Majority guessed this saying accurately. We also had a couple of votes for "Bark worse than a bite", which I thought was pretty good too coz it did look like I was going to bite and a vote for "It's a dog's life"...which also made sense. Well done everyone! Thanks for being such great sports. Bagel gets the "Dog Series" award for the being the clever beagle to correctly guess the dog saying first! Feel free to post the award on your blog, if you want to, Bagel.



The saying "You Can't Teach An Old Dog New Tricks" means that learning to do new things is difficult because it is hard to forget the old ways and habits. Now, this may apply to humans but as this 7-year old beagle has proven, an old dog can learn new tricks given the right motivation - food! I think that a canine's ability to learn new tricks is dependent on the human's ability to teach the trick more so than anything else!

In defense of humans, mum reckons that whilst challenging, it is possible for older folks to learn new things. She cites the example of gramps learning to use the Automated Teller Machine (ATM). Back in his younger days, withdrawal of money used to be done over the counter and they didn't have ATMs (which only became main-stream in mid to late 1980's). Mum also says that gramps learnt how to send SMS in his late 50's and is now quite an expert in sending messages from his mobile phone ! She does agree though that it is not easy for older folks to master new technology but when there's a will, there's a way.

I reckon it's much easier for old doggies to learn new tricks. In fact the catching kibble in mid-air trick was learnt just in time for this post. Dad was mucking around with the Lumix and decided to teach me this new trick. When mum saw the photo, she knew she had the winning shot for this dog saying!

One of the earliest tricks I learnt as a pup from my humans was the "shake" trick. I can do right and left paw to accomodate both right and left-handed humans! Below, I'm doing this trick for a friend. Last year, mum taught me "High Five", which is an extension of the "Shake" command, but alas, she hasn't taken a photo of me doing that trick yet...


I can also do the "roll-over" trick quite successfully, so much so that I can automatically do this trick before the humans ask me to when I know they have a treat at hand.


My humans didn't teach me all the tricks I know. Some are learnt instinctively. As a pup, I used to pick up a large leaf stalk or a stick when I used to go for walks. When I was an adult, I automatically picked up my own leash, much to the surprise of my humans.


Some tricks backfire on my humans though. Remember the "Shake" trick? Well, this is a trick I taught myself this year. When my humans are sitting comfortably on the sofa watching TV, I sit really close to mum (mostly), and the lift my paw to her knee to get her attention. Sometimes, it's to remind her that it's time for my dinner. Other times it's to tell her I want a tummy rub!


So who said "You can't teach an old dog new tricks"? They've obviouly not met this beagle. If you're an old dog, tell us your new tricks story! If you're a young pup, share with us too.