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Here Are The 5 Best Tricks To Teach Your Dog

May 05, 2021 by Leo Roux

Teaching your dog tricks is part of the bonding process between you and your dog. Tricks help your pup in many ways. They boost cognition, build trust, and they're a lot of fun!

Plus, whenever someone comes to your home or meets you while you're out and about walking your dog, one of the first questions they'll ask you is, "what tricks does your dog know?"

If you want to use that as an opportunity to show off your dog's skills enthusiastically, here are the top five tricks to teach your dog.

Two of the Best Tricks To Teach Your Dog: Sit and Stay

The first suggestions are prerequisites for all dog training (including the best dog training ever). No matter what you and your dog will do, your pup will need to know how to sit and stay. Simply put, these are the bread-and-butter easy dog tricks that everyone has to teach their dogs.

Additionally, the sit and stay tricks teach essential discipline to your pup. People may not realize how helpful they are because they're two of the easiest tricks to teach your dog, but they're beneficial in so many circumstances.

Is your dog running around unnecessarily? Sit and stay can come to the rescue. Is your dog barking too much? You can tell your dog to sit as a way to get them to stop. Finally, if your dog is jumping up on people unnecessarily, sit and stay will solve that problem.

Shake Paw/Hand

The third trick on this list is that everyone will ask your dog to do - shake hands! They won't even ask you if your pup knows it. Instead, they'll go ahead, hold their hand out, and ask, "shake paw?"

Therefore, in terms of tricks to teach your dog, this one will engage your guests and show them that your pup is a gentle, friendly dog with a firm handshake.

Furthermore, shake paw builds on the last trick that you have already taught your dog: sit. Most dogs will shake paws from the sitting position. As such, this trick can build upon that knowledge.

Up/Stand

The fourth one of the best tricks to teach your dog is the opposite of the stay trick. The stay trick, in particular, helps to keep your dog from jumping on people, but sometimes you want your pup to jump on you or someone else! Sometimes it's adorable to have your dog "stand up!"

With this trick (as with all the other tricks in this list), training treats and positive reinforcement are the way to teach them. You can typically teach your dog this trick by holding the treat over their heads. They will naturally "stand" to try and get the treat.

Some people like to teach their dogs to dance while standing. While this is very fun to watch, it's potentially damaging to your dog's health. Dogs can injure their knees and hips over time if they dance a lot on their back legs. While there are many reasons for this, the most obvious one is that dogs are not bipeds like humans! They're not used to standing on their hind legs!

Another One of the Best Tricks To Teach Your Dog: Spin

While many people like to teach the play-dead trick or the rollover one, the spin trick tends to be more entertaining for both you and your pup.

There are many videos on teaching your dog how to spin, like this one, so when it comes to tricks to teach your dog, this one is easier to teach. Load YouTube and follow the instructions!

One thing you should know is that pups will get pretty energetic doing spin, so make sure you're ready to throw their toy or run them in the backyard after. They'll likely be having so much fun that you'll have to do some things to wind them down! Indeed, the spin trick is a beautiful way for you and your dog to bond.

The Best Tricks To Teach Your Dog Are Also Relatively Straightforward

There are so many tricks to teach your dog, but these are the top five in bonding potential and entertainment value. Naturally, if there are others you want to teach your pup such as dog obedience training and agility training, you should feel free to teach them additional ones! Please make sure always to use positive reinforcement when training your dog. No other training method works as well.

It's worth noting that you can teach almost any dog these tricks since most of them are relatively simple for pups across all breeds to learn. With that said, if you are finding it challenging to train your dog, please don't hesitate to get a professional dog trainer. They're usually worth the money!

When to start training a puppy?

According to VCA Hospitals, you can begin training your puppy as early as 7 to 8 weeks. However, your puppy will have a short attention span that young, so keep the training to things like sit and stay. If you have an older dog that hasn't received training yet, the good news is that it's rarely too late to start!

How to train your dog to sit?

Sit is often noted as the easiest trick to teach your dog. Most people will say the word "sit" while putting their dog in the sit position and reinforcing the change of position with a treat. Sit is primarily a requirement for safety - during various situations, having your dog sit can put everyone at ease.

How to train your dog to stay?

Like the sit trick, stay is a trick you need to keep your dog safe as getting your dog to "sit and stay" at a street corner while waiting for the light gives you peace of mind. This combination also uses some basic dog commands, so you can build upon these tricks once you teach them. All you need to do is position your dog, give them the stay command, give them some other word to let them know they're free to move, and then reward them with a treat!