Why Trick Training May Not Be Good For Your Puppy
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
I work with a lot of people who get a new puppy that's eight or 10 weeks old, and the first thing they do is start teaching the puppy to shake, high-five, or to roll over. It can be fun to do this with your puppy and put it on Instagram, for your friends to see.
If you teach the puppy tricks too soon and you don't focus on other things first, like its name, walking on a leash, potty training, acclimation to the crate, and stay.
Why Teaching Paw or Shake Might be a Bad Idea
If you're working on something like Shake or High Five, you're spending time working on things that is not going to help you with obedience, discipline and managing the puppy from getting in trouble. You’re teaching the puppy fun things, but what you really want to be focusing on is creating rules, boundaries, leadership, a schedule, and the puppy getting 16 to 18 hours of sleep a day.
When you teach your puppy to shake, they think that they can paw everyone all the time. I've seen this happen a lot. You say “give me your paw,” and the puppy is always pawing new people that they meet thinking this is the appropriate greeting. It gets annoying after a while, especially if it's a retriever like a golden or a lab, and they get very big. They can actually hurt somebody by doing that. It can become a liability.
Another thing that happens when you start teaching your puppy paw or shake, is that when you start teaching the hand signal for sit, which is the palm facing up in front of their face, they start bringing their paw and putting it on your hand because you taught them paw or shake early on. Now you have a conflict. You have a confused dog. They don't know what you want, and then you get frustrated because the puppy isn't paying attention to the hand signal and everything is going wrong.
Why Teaching Roll Over Might Be a Bad Idea
The second command that we teach puppy after sit is down. When we have a puppy that is in a down-stay on a place or a bed, we can control their space. They're not allowed to go off of that place or bed, and they can't have potty accidents and start chewing everything and getting themselves into trouble.
This is the very first thing I taught my dog, Dixie at 10 wI taught her to go to her bed stay. She can't move until I release her with the word, “okay.”
A lot of people don't do this. They want to teach their puppy to roll over, and then when they get into obedience training and we cue the puppy to “down,” the puppy rolls over. This isn't good because the rolling over is actually an appeasement gesture. It's the puppy showing another dog or a human that it’s not a threat. They're submissive, and it’s a lack of confidence as well. We don't want puppies to be lacking confidence.
Many years ago, I worked with a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. They taught the puppy to roll over. It went halfway on its back, and it peed everywhere all the time, every time somebody would come in the house. I instructed the owners not to reward the puppy for rolling over anymore because it's taking away the puppy's confidenceIt's and it’s ability to focus, engage, and stay obedient. They understood that, and they stopped rewarding the rollover. The submissive and excited urination went away immediately.
These are a few of the reasons why teaching tricks early on can get in the way of obedience training later on.
You really want to focus on obedience, discipline, rules, boundaries, and structure. I'm not saying you can't play with your puppy. In the schedule that I give my clients, they create a structure for the puppy. There is a section for play, training, leash walking, potty breaks, meals, affection, and sleep.
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