Beyond Sit, Stand, Stay – Teaching Your Dog Tricks
If you want to have some more fun with your dog you are probably wondering about dog tricks training. One of the things to remember for dog tricks training is that you should observe what you dog is naturally doing and then build around that for the tricks. For example, if your dog loves to roll around, then teach them to roll on command.
Dogs learn most quickly when they are motivated. That is why you want to do trick training built around what they like to do naturally. For you dog to learn a trick, she needs to know that she is doing things correctly. For example, if you throw a Frisbee and give the retrieve command, an untrained dog will naturally go after the Frisbee, but they probably won’t bring it back to you until you have trained her to bring it back to you. Each trick needs to be broken down step by step. When your dog catches the Frisbee encourage her to return to you by calling her and then tell her she’s a good girl.
If a trick is complicated then you need to think it through thoroughly before you start and divide it up. Then teach each section to your dog individually before you try to put it all together. With all tricks, but especially complicated tricks, you need to do the training in short sessions and not too much at one time. If you try to make your dog concentrate too hard for an extended time, she will loose interest.
When you begin dog tricks training, you should always start out with easier tricks such as shake hands, retrieve and roll over. Then you can work on the more difficult tricks. The main point is to have fun because the more fun you have, the happier your dog will be. You can’t train an unhappy, stressed dog, so keep it light.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
