Here are 5 EASY and FUN DOG TRICKS to get started with training if you were thinking about training your dog tricks! These 5 tricks teach your dog important skills and concepts that can be building blocks for training more complex advanced tricks! These tricks are great for dogs of any age. If you have an 8 week old puppy I suggest first training a few other behaviors first before teaching your puppy to use his paws to shake. As a puppies first behaviors become very strong, so I suggest teaching something like eye contact and settle on a mat first before teaching shake and wave.
Here are the tricks in the order they appear:
Shake – You offer your hand and the dog gives you their paw
Wave – When you wave or say goodbye your dog waves his paw
Go in a circle around you or around an object – This is a great starter trick to teaching the cue to spin in a circle because it is easier for the dog to offer the behavior and learn the skill of offering before you then ask them to turn in a circle on their own
Leg weaving and Figure of 8 – This is a great behavior to teach luring skills as well as teach your dog to offer multiple behaviors and work for duration.
Paws up – paws up on a platform – This behavior can be used as a foundation for training many behaviors but is also great for teaching a dog the concept of offering if he is new to training as well as teaching a dog how to work away from you as you can put the platform further away from you to teach the dog to go out to it. Tricks that this behavior is a foundation for are – say your prayers, selfie tricks, the rear end awareness exercise, heelwork, your feet on mine / footsies, obedience position changes, and so many more!
ATTN!: If you have already trained your dog all these tricks, then I suggest watching my video that has 20 in depth dog trick tutorials ranging from easy to extremely advanced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhfOk05nM_4
