Tricks training is a wonderful activity to
participate in with you and your dog. It is both mentally and physically enriching
for your dog and it improves your skills as your dogs trainer. an easy trick that you can get started with
would be paw, or some people refer to that as shake and what you want to make sure you
do with tricks training is keep the training fun and positive for your dog. A good recommendation I'd like to give everyone
is to resist the temptation to grab whenever training any behavior – you want them to think
it through and in order for them to do that you need to break it down into small achievable
steps so you're not necessarily looking for the end result you're looking for anything
that's moving in the direction of that.
So for paw I'm not going to grab at his feet
because he might not like that he's also not using his brain if I'm doing the work for
him so dogs if they often cannot get something with their mouth they use their feet so I'm
going to put a treat right on Jack's nose and I'm going to have my hand ready when he
tries to knock them out of my hand because he can't get them with his mouth and I'm just
going to wait for that – I'm going to wait for any paw movement whatsoever – he moved
his left paw just a little bit so that was a nice baby step – good I got a lot of movement
out of the right one – I'm going to try again – good – I say the word good every time he
does the behavior correctly and slowly it seems that I will be able to shake with his
paw.
The repetition of hearing the word good when
his paw touches my paw so he makes that association. So now I think I'm ready to take the treats
away – good – he ois still going to get one but I don't necessarily want to put them up
front anymore and then we can work with a little duration so he can hold it there – oh
beautiful – good and now that he's doing that readily if I'd like to put a verbal que on
it I'm going to be able to say – Jack – paw – good – and now I've taught my dog to give
paw.