How to Train a Pet to Do a Trick

Dogs, as human’s best friends and a popular choice of pet, are actually quite smart to learn to do some tricks. However, doing tricks requires both owner’s and “bestie’s” effort. Hence, here are some tips that you may follow to make the trick learning process an achievable goal as well as a pleasant thing to do.

First thing first, the owners should know that the keystone of training is positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement means that you give some treats or rewards to the dog, when it performs the desired action that you asked. By rewarding, dogs can do better when learning a new behavior because their brain will connect the behavior with the reward together. As the result, they would try to repeat the target action again and again in order to get that reward. Consequently, try to use this tip instead of punishment because it might be more effective this way.

Second, staying clam also plays an important role in training. Teaching dog tricks is just like treating a three-year-old child. We cannot expect a three-year-old child to learn to write in just a few minutes, so are dogs. It takes time for them to learn new things. Thus, don’t yell at your dog when it didn’t perform well because it might confuse them. Yelling doesn’t make the situation better. Staying calm and treat your dog with patience is the best solution. And who knows? You and your dog may form an even closer bond during this process.

Third, as the old saying goes, ‘’practice makes perfect’’, this also applies with training your dog. The only thing left to do is reviewing the training content with your dog constantly. Since, practice makes perfect and it also creates muscle memory, which is crucial for dogs to memorize things.

Though it takes time and patience to train your dog to do a trick, it won’t be a hard thing to achieve if you follow the three tips above. In addition, you may get some extra advantages from those tips, such as a stronger bonding between you and the pet. Therefore, find a time to give those tips a try!