3 Easy To Teach Dog Tricks
Who doesn’t like showing how smart their dog is? You know, get them to sit, shake and maybe roll over. But to teach dog tricks take time and patience and a few tricks yourself. Here are 3 simple and easy-to-teach dog tricks.
How to teach dog tricks
To teach your dog tricks even easy ones you need to have some small reward treats. As well as be in a quiet suitable place. Keeping the training sessions to 10 – 15 minutes.
If you don’t your dog will start to get bored. Remember when he gets something right lots of praise and a reward treat. Just be careful not to get him over excited or he will lose concentration.
Shaking hands
It’s simple as getting your dog to give you his paw.
First, get your dog to sit, then as you say the word ‘paw’ take your dog’s paw in your hand. Then give the dog a treat, and repeat this, after a few times do not take his paw so quickly. Say the word, count to one then take it
You should notice he is bringing his paw up as you say the word if he does not go back to saying it at the same time. Do it a few more times then slow your response again. After 2 or 3 sessions most dogs pick this one up quite happily.
High-five your dog
The high five, like a lot of tricks high five, is a progression of an earlier trick, in this case, the paw trick.
Hold a treat in your fingers and raise your hand slightly higher than you would for the paw trick. Your dog will think you want to do the paw trick and will reach for the treat with his paw as we taught him earlier.
As he reaches up you say “high five” and give him the treat. Once your dog has mastered the paw trick this one should be very easy to learn and with just a few sessions he will be doing it on hand signal rather than voice control.
Jumping through hoops
Getting your dog to jump through a hoop needs some thought.
Before you start this one I would just like to ask you to be a little sensible and not hold the hoop too high as you do not want your dog to hurt himself while doing the trick.
Sit your dog on one side of a hula hoop. Then get the dog’s attention on your hand on the other side of the hoop take a treat in your hand and give the dog the command to release him from the sit.
At first, he may attempt to go around or under the hoop. If this happens to start again, your dog wants the treat and will soon learn that going around or under does not get it so he will soon start going through it. When he does say hoopla and give him the treat. He will soon be jumping through the hoop on the command of hoopla.
When I started doing this trick I had a medium-sized dog (a Labrador). So I started with the hoop 6 inches from the ground and slowly raised it to waist height. If you have a smaller dog you might want to start with the hoop touching the ground.
So the dog just goes through the hoop and then slowly raises it as he gets used to the trick.
