Top Tips From A Training Specialist - Em and Pixel

What made you start learning and training to do all your tricks?

It's a great bonding exercise and builds engagement. It also has the benefit of preventing unwanted behaviours from occurring as your dog is mentally tired and their needs are met!

I turned to trick training with Pixel as I got her the week before the first lockdown and started teaching her some basic skills of which she was quickly mastering and obviously loved doing. She had mastered sit, down, stand, come, fetch, spin, hi-5 and walking in heel in the first week! So when we got into lockdown, I turned to learning more skills with her and realised very quickly that she absolutely loved learning so we just kept going!

What are the benefits of training your dog to do tricks?

There are many benefits to training - mentally engaging for you and your dog. It keeps your dog mentally and in some cases, physically fit. You're more likely to be able to take your dog to more places as their behaviour is more predictable and you can become the most rewarding thing in their environment.

Tricks don't need to be complex, you can teach skills like putting their paws up on objects (trees) on your walk to have a better behaved dog at home for example. I think it's important to train the dog in front of you and find what they enjoy and hone in on those skills.

However, for those of us who enjoy complex trick training it's a great conversation starter and does encourage others to try new things with their dog/s!

Can you give a quick rundown of how to get started with training? 

There's a lot of valuable resources online to start - domorewithyourdog, pupprschool, parkour, dogsvictoria (or your state).

There's also local dog clubs, however I encourage people to do their research because not all dog training clubs or schools are the same. Try to find organisations that use force free, fear free training methods. If your instructor is using methods that you don't like, don't use those methods on your dog and please find another group.

Remember: no matter how skilled a person is at training dogs, a good trainer is always learning and up-skilling and trying to use the most up-dated and scientifically proven methods. (IAABC is a good resource and to check a trainers status on force free methods you can check them on the pet professional guild Australia)

What trick took the longest to learn?

Limp. Pixel struggled to get the concept of maintaining one foot in the air for so long! Until one day it just clicked!

What’s your most impressive trick?

I'm not sure about most impressive, as Pixel knows a lot of tricks. We particularly enjoy tricks paired with objects and what we call "chain commands" (several behaviours on one cue). For example, putting my dirty clothes into the washing machine, ring toss, putting her toys away, getting the mail from the mailbox, and basketball. I suppose it depends on what your personal definition of impressive is.

One thing that Pixel is very skilled at though, is doing tricks under very high-level distractions - we play basketball at the park around other dogs and people doing random things for instance.

Do you have any advice for someone wanting to start training with their dog?

The most valuable tips: it's never too late to start training, old dogs CAN and do learn new tricks/skills, go at your dogs pace, don't get frustrated or take things out on your dog if they don't understand something - that's feedback to you that you need to make things easier - make things so obvious to the dog that they can't fail and build up from there, keep sessions short (5-10 mins tops), always end on a win for your dog and most importantly : ensure training is fun for both of you!