Teaching a trick is

the least important part of teaching tricks

I get many questions a propos tricks – how I teach that or another trick, where I get ideas, why I teach them etc., so here is a little bit on tricks:

When teaching tricks, teaching a trick is the least important part of it. The reason why I started teaching tricks was because I wanted to teach puppy La that working with me is fun. With puppy Lo, I had so many problems because of all her fears and phobias that I spent all the time and all her meals for getting her used to different things, people, animals, noises etc. – you name it, puppy Lo was afraid of it for sure! And then I got La, my perfect puppy. No fears, no phobias, just hyperactive ball of fur with the cutest face in the world. I never imagined before that training dogs can be so easy, being used to first Aiken and then Lo... I taught her everything that I could think of in a couple of minutes… Her unstoppable enthusiasm for working was forcing me to get creative, to think of tricks that nobody around ever even thought of teaching… By age of 6 months, half of Europe knew her for her tricks. And her enthusiasm, of course, that one just can’t go by unnoticed. She got me addicted too.

By now, I teach my dogs everything they need to know via tricks: tricks train them to think, to use their body and mind. Tricks teach them that there is no difference between working and playing and gives them the right attitude. Teaching tricks teaches them that they’re the smartest dogs in the world, that there are no mistakes and no failure, that trying things is good. Tricks give them confidence in their thinking abilities and moves that they can or cannot do. Tricks build a bond between me and them and creates a deeper understanding for them how I think and for me how they think. Tricks make them feel important, smart, confident, needed and bonded with me.

Yes, as you probably figured out by now: I think tricks are very important, I think tricks are the most important part of human-dog relationship and the most important part of agility. Teaching tricks is easy, the hardest part of the job is to get an idea WHAT to teach. HOW is mostly easy: just click&treat anything you like and shape it from there. I used to use lots of luring, but am now mostly (but not exclusively) using shaping.

But since I keep getting demands to explain how I trained backward weaving and standing on front feet, here is a short explanation:

- Backward weaving

A dog should already know to walk backwards on command and should be able to flip from front to heel position and from front to right-heel position. When you master that, the trick as such is easy: just put everything together. I start in front position, standing pretty close to a wall or a couch and ask a dog for heel position and then right away to back up. He can’t back up straight because of a wall, so he will back up more towards you and you can help him with right leg to back in between your legs back to front position. Now ask for a flip to right-heel position, again for back, help him with left leg to come back to front position between your legs and voila you just got your first backward figure 8. You will need a week or two to master it, but yes, it’s pretty easy trick if a dog can back up and flip to your left&right side. If not – go to work!

- Standing on front feet

I used two different methods with La and Bu – La’s style of standing on front feet is more impressive since her hind feet are stretched up in the air, but the training process was much longer and she doesn’t have a very good balance that way, so I tried differently with Bu since she would have had even bigger problems with balancing, considering that she is bigger and heavier.

With La, I first taught her to target my hand with her hind leg. This was quite of a project, but then we progressed fairly quickly, putting a target higher and higher – until it got physically very hard for her. Then we needed to take it slowly, built some more muscle and get some more balance. Still, she can’t hold the position for too long, but this was never my goal anyway.

With Bu, I started with 2on2off position – not something I actually use for contacts as you probably figured out from our videos, but something I teach just like any other shaping game: clicking a dog first to climb on an object, then when he is leaving an object with hind feet still on it and when he understands a position, clicking when she goes in the position directly, hind feet first. After a dog gets it, it gets easy, just make an object higher and higher until you change it for a wall – you shouldn’t have any problems from the point that a dog understands how to go into the position directly to the point that you start to wean off the wall. Again, it’s a pretty long process since a dog needs to get strength and balance to be able to hold a position without a help of wall, so don’t hurry too much. We’re in this stage right now with Bu – I still use a wall to help her get into the position, but then ask her to turn from the wall and hold a position on her own for a little bit. She also sometimes offers to try to get into a position and pushes her rear end up pretty nicely, but not yet to totally straight position, so we still have lots of work, but I’m taking it easy since she is so young.

For the rest of the tricks, I guess you can figure it out on your own how I trained it, it's no rocket science, just some time and lots of fun.

How many tricks my dogs can do? Just as much as I’ve had ideas. When I have no better idea, I will play shaping games with them, decide on which chair I want them to jump or what drawer I want them to touch… Anything, just to make them feel important, smart and needed.

How much time it took me to teach them all those tricks? Less as it looks like and less and less for every next trick. Those dogs are trained to think and wow, they sure do think! La however does a little less thinking, but so much action that it’s always easy to get whatever you want from her. She puts 110% into everything she does from day one. Bu does more thinking and less action, she is my thinking dog. She started off by giving 0%, but we’re up to 95% by now. 15 more to goJ Yeah, we’ll get there, she is still just a puppy, we still have 15, 20 years ahead of us...