Read About Teaching Tricks

Teaching your dog tricks is a matter of tapping into your dog´s desire to make you happy. In addition, learning tricks will stimulate your dog and distract him from more destructive things that the dog invents to amuse itself. An old dog can learn new tricks. It´just a matter of patience and repitition.

1. Don´t spend hours on end trying to teach your dog a specific trick. Spend about five minutes at a time. You may be able to work up to longer sessions, but start with very short ones. A short attention span means your dog will get bored and frustrated with a longer session -- as will you!

2. Be sure to work with plenty of treats and end with a lot of praise, even if your dog didn´t totally get the trick right. The pup deserves praise for trying. In addition, have a playtime afterwards, so your puppy associates trick-learning/training with lots of fun. If your dog isn´t a "treat" dog -- some aren´t -- reward him with his favorite thing. Some dogs would rather romp with you a bit than have any yummy dog cookie out there!

3. There are a variety of books and websites relating to teaching your dog tricks -- take a look at your resources! Tricks that you can teach your dog start with:
   1. Sit

   2. Stay

   3. Lay Down

With patience and a willing dog, you can progress to things like:

1. Dance (pup on hind legs, "dancing")

2. Hide & seek -- this can take many forms, like looking for people, looking for treats, looking for a certain toy

3. Put away their own toys.

Above all, have fun with your dog. Teaching tricks is essentially another way to play with your dog.