You can try treats, but a lot of shibas I know have a hard time digesting their own food, much less human food and new foods. I always used their own food when training. It took us 3 years of trying various (and expensive) organic dog foods with fairly regular 'rhea until I gave up and started feeding them Iams for sensitive stomachs. The only bathroom problems they've had in the last year were due to people feeding them table scraps or too many treats. So anytime you introduce a new dog food or any types of treats, do so gradually over the course of several days to a week. Or else
She has the capability to start learning her name (and tricks) now, but depending on how you train and her personality, who knows. You're lucky if you can get most shibas to sit, but they have the intelligence to learn hundreds of tricks. A lot of repeating the command and a lot of praise. I use a special hand signal and verbal command for each trick so usually they'll start to respond to one or the other. Personality plays so much into what tricks they do. Our female loves doing tricks and making us happy, so with time, I could teach her anything. Kobe, on the other hand, is pretty stubborn and will only do a few tricks, but he does them pretty well. The other shiba I talked about earlier that goes in the poop-strikes, it took me forever to teach him to sit and I never could teach him to high five or anything. Sooooo stubborn but so loving and cute (he also does the somewhat rare Shiba Smile where he pulls his ears back, squints his eyes and smiles when you come home
).
Kobe can sit, high five, platz (lay down), crawl, be friends (handshake), fetch, whisper and speak (with a ton of coaxing because he hates speaking). Meiko can do all the same except she'd rather just high five over be friends. She can also sit pretty (butt on the ground, paws in the air), up up (stand on back legs), dance (jump and spin on back legs), roll over, yum yum (lick lips twice), peek-a-boo (covers her eyes while she's laying on her back), yuppy puppy (google Yuppy Puppy, we bought one for her and she will high five the lever for food, but she'll do it on her own even when it's empty when her or Kobe need something). The dog I told you about that's walking across the US and back, Emmie, will sit and only rarely give her paw. lol So it really just depends on the dog, but if you work with her now, she'll enjoy the praise and making you happy, and will be far more willing to do tricks.
