Our new website www.dog-tricks-for-beginners.co.uk is being constructed with you in mind. We want to hear about you and your dog. As we build up our content, we hope that you will send us your videos of how your training is going, and any problems you may be having. We will then offer you feedback. We want to build a trick training community for beginners, so we hope you will join us.
Each week we will be adding a new favourite trick you can train with your dog. We will publish a weekly blog containing step-by-step trick training videos.
This new website will be tailored to help you and your dog so we'd love to hear how you are doing on your trick training journey once you get started.
Any questions? Just ask.
What you need before you start training:
- Lots of tasty treats. Use high value snacks you know your dog will love for the best results! If using something like cooked sausages (cocktail sausages are easy to start with) make sure you chop them into pieces appropriate to the size of your dog.
- A favourite toy. We use a tuggy toy for some of our tricks.
- A fit and healthy dog. Nobody likes to do physical activity if they are in pain, or uncomfortable. The same goes for your dog.
Our first trick is the SPIN/TWIST
I am teaching my young German Shepherd dog Eddie lots of little tricks and moves as we go along our training journey. The fun stuff is a great grounding for dog sports, like Heelwork to Music, which we aim to compete in. He just loves to train! We've filmed our first trick video, which is how to do a Spin and a Twist. Please email us in the message section if you have any questions about this trick, or have any problems trying to train it to your dog, and we'll do our best to help.
Looking ahead to next week, we'll be showing you how me and Eddie are starting to train leg weaves. Leg weaves are a great trick for any dog so don't miss this one. All the trick video's will be loaded on the TRICK TUTORIAL page of this website as we film them, so be sure to visit us regularly to build your repertoire!
Trick training is a great way to build your relationship with your dog. Having fun and learning what makes your dog tick is so important in dog training. If your relationship is strong you can achieve more than you ever dreamed possible. The video below shows me, my granddaughter Sienna Lee and our dogs performing at the Anvil Theatre in Basingstoke a few years ago in front of 800 people. I don't know how we got through this with only a few basic beginner moves, and our fantastic dogs Elsa and Tula of course! Anyhow, it was terrifying but somehow we pulled it off and the audience loved it!
If you want to learn the 'hug' pose that Tula and I did at the end of our Variety Show Performance we recommend this great video to show you how to train 'the hug'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBuzWFrApBw
Lucy Heath's YouTube training video with Trip Hazard (below) shows how to train some of his amazing tricks. You may have seen Lucy on the TV show Britain's got Talent. We met Lucy many years ago at a dog show, and two of the photos you can see, in the picture slide, are of Lucy teaching my granddaughter some fun tricks with her dog Foxy.
https://youtu.be/40m9ye9Hvb4?si=1x4D84QhX71GdZJI