TRICKS are training

VIDEO: In a Land Far Far away...from Manhattan, Dogs were Trained.

I am a firm believer that DOG TRICKS *almost* outweigh traditional "obedience" behaviors as tools to gain control and leverage over your dog. In fact as far as your dog knows, "sit" & "down" are just *tricks* you seem very attached to them performing. We could make a case that to the dog, they are in fact ALL "tricks". He doesn't know there's a functional difference between how you view "sit" Vs. "paw". However, I can certainly tell you that in the cases where a dog knows several traditional obedience behaviors and a trick or two, the reliability of the TRICKS often far outstrips the reliability of the traditional obedience training. When is the last time you saw a dog REFUSE to give PAW when someone asked him? Pretty much never. WHY is this? I have a theory.

As rational humans, we seem to believe that SIT and DOWN, etc are behaviors our dog SHOULD do, regardless of whether we plan to reward it-or even have trained our dog to understand it. We believe he's simply SUPPOSED to do it.
To a greater degree we EVEN believe he came INSTALLED with it, as if it's somehow wired into dogs to KNOW sit on command without ANY training at all-that's SUPER funny to me, but that's a whole other discussion.

When a dog Gives Paw, Spins or Rolls Over it fills us with SUCH delight that we UNIVERSALLY lavish BOTH treats and praise virtually 100% of the time--meaning that we reward it EVERY SINGLE TIME....and so do our friends, guest and strangers on the street! This is a pretty important lesson for an impressionable young dog and leads as you might imagine to a stellar response for those behaviors.
One last reason that dogs often perform their tricks better is that we simply practice them MORE often than other behaviors because they make us smile, feel silly and enjoy the nature of what it's like to be with our dog. Beautiful.

So how can we use this information to be better trainers with our dogs? Consider these options and more...

1.TRY to consistently be MORE rewarding for the behaviors you find USEFUL and IMPORTANT-Don't assume your dog SHOULD do it. There is no SHOULD to a dog-there IS what IS....Think like YODA.

2. Don't discount TRICKS as useless gimmicks. For example, you can just as easily get your dog to greet people NICELY by giving paw WHILE he sits, and it MIGHT be even easier?