When pet owners hear the word “tricks”, they think of all the cute things people teach like fetching slippers or sitting pretty. The reality is that everything we teach is a “trick”, and instructors use that term to include things like keeping four paws on the floor when greeting people, learning how to go to a crate, or sitting on cue.

With that perspective, it’s easy to see why tricks are such an important thing to focus on with every dog. Here are five reasons you should teach your dog “tricks”.

You Want a Dog You Can Live With

Teaching your dog to leave food alone, walk nicely on a leash, or get off the couch makes life with dogs a joy rather than a hassle. If you’ve ever envied the people whose dogs seem to listen to every word, realize that they have just taught their dogs more tricks than you have (so far). There’s nothing magical about training a dog who is easy to live with. It takes knowledge, practice, consistency, and patience.

You Want to Create a Bond With Your Dog Through Training

Most people get dogs for the love, companionship, or to do fun activities with. It’s no fun to spend time with someone who doesn’t care about being around you, or who doesn’t listen to the things you say.

Training your dog creates a deeper relationship because you actually have to interact with him in a way that increases communication on both ends of the leash. You learn more about your dog and your dog learns what you want. Spending time together having fun (and yes, training is supposed to be fun!) increases the bond between you.

You Want to Decrease “Bad” Behaviors

Bad is in quotation marks for a reason. Dogs don’t know there are “bad” behaviors until we have taught them what we want them to do. Rather than eliminating in the house, we have to teach them that we want them to eliminate outside. If we don’t want them to chew on “our” stuff, we have to teach them what they CAN chew on.

Dogs don’t come pre-wired with a set of cultural norms that make behavior inherently “good” or “bad”. We have to teach them what we want so they don’t do what we don’t want.

Between sufficient mental and physical exercise and an understanding of what we want them to do, we can decrease or eliminate the behaviors we don’t want like jumping on guests, taking food off of the counter, or chewing on our shoes. Bored dogs will “create” jobs to keep them busy. Tired dogs would rather rest and relax.

If your dog ever accidentally gets loose, a solid recall ensures that they will come back to you, and a “get dressed” that is on cue (leash up) makes it simple to catch them. If we are on an off-leash walk, as soon as I hold the open loop of the leash out, my dogs come running to stick their heads through. It has saved me more than once when there was an unfriendly dog on the path.

Most dogs are taken to the shelter in the difficult “teenage phase” from 9 – 18 months. Behavior issues are in the top 5 reasons for surrendering. Spending time on training can eliminate difficult behavior issues and keep your pet in your household, where he belongs.

Your Dog Will “Learn to Learn”

When you started Kindergarten, you probably didn’t know there was a process for learning. In high school or college, you learned ways to study that worked for you, how to organize to be successful in school, and how to manage your time. Dogs need to “learn to learn” too!

Every time you teach your dog a “trick”, you are not only teaching the specific behavior, you are also teaching your dog about the process of learning. A dog who is clicker trained first had to learn what the sound meant, and that he could influence the click by his behavior. The more you teach your dog, the better he understands the learning process, the easier it is to teach the next thing.

If you’ve ever wondered how trainers teach so many tricks, it all comes back to this. Their dogs understand the process of learning, making it much easier to teach successive and more complex tricks. “The more your dog learns, the easier it is to learn the next thing.”

Today’s Tip

Teaching your dog “tricks”, including basic obedience behaviors, benefits both of you in many different ways. Learn fun ways to teach things and you will never run out of activities to do with your dog.

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Top photo: Copyright 2018 Great Dane Photos. Used with permission.

Second photo courtesy of Howling Moon Photography.