At club last night our trainer was saying it would be fun if any of our dogs could skateboard for our displays, and I thought 'those Clever Cavaliers do it, why can't my Cavalier Ellie?' So my friend (another Cavalier owner) and I have bought skateboards, but we don't know if there's a way to teach your dog to skateboard or if you just encourage them to play around. Ellie is quite happy to put her front feet on the board and even jump on it and sit down, but I don't know how to get her to push herself! I can't skateboard myself btw so I have no idea how it all works. I'd be quite happy if she just walked herself along with her back legs, I can't see her learning to push at speed, but just that much would be fun. Any ideas?

put Spanish Water Dog and Skateboard into a search on youtube, there's a woman there clicker training one to skateboard.

Definitely clicker training -that way you do it in tiny parts and it will be much easier.

I've never got round to clicker training, but she's always watching for approval so I'm pretty good at timing a verbal reward followed by a treat. I'll have a look for that on Youtube!

???????? why on earth would anyone want to do that????? :( :(

[i???????? why on earth would anyone want to do that?????   ]

For the same reason anybody wants to do many things with their dogs.  So it might not be the rest of our cups of teas but why have a go?

Because the dogs you see doing it seem to love it, Ellie loves learning new tricks and she loves to please me, and it looks like a laugh to have a go. Seems like plenty of good reasons to me. :-)