Training An Older Dog

Taining an older dog is possible, but it must have at least some basic obedience. There is not much chance of teaching it to do tricks if it is a badly behaved dog in the first place.

Your dog should know the basic commands such as sit, heel, down, before the trick training begins, as it will make things so much easier later on. Once these have been mastered, you can begin to teach it some tricks and your dog will soon be entertaining your friends with the following three simple tricks.

Begging.

Have your dog sit in a corner of the room with his/her back to the wall while you stand in front of him/her. The walls will back up your dog and give it the confidence that he/she won’t fall over if it raises his/her front legs off the floor.

Take some small pieces of food and hold them above your dog’s head whilst luring it to reach up for it. Each time he does take the food, praise him and repeat this procedure slowly encouraging him to reach higher every time.

While encouraging the dog to reach up for the food, you have to make sure that he/she keeps its hind legs on the ground. You may achieve this by moving the food forwards over its head slightly making your dog displace its weight back over its hindlegs,which will teaching him/her to keep its balance.

Once these have been mastered you can begin to teach it some tricks and your dog will soon be entertaining your friends with the following three simple tricks. You should expect at this stage that the dog seems to go backwards in its learning, but this is to be expected until the dog can to perfect it by just using its own body weight.

Shaking hands.

There are 2 parts to this trick for your dog to learn. Both, a verbal part and a non-verbal part which work together to give the dog a cue that you would like him/her to perform the trick.

In the first place, the dog should start off in a sitting position. Give him a single word verbal command such as ‘shake’, and at the same time reach out with your right hand until it is just a few centimetres from your dog’s right leg. Your outstretched hand becomes the non-verbal cue.

At first, your dog will probably just sit motionless not sure of what to do. If this happens, you can push or prod its right leg forwards gently with your left hand until it rests in your right hand. Once it has done this, praise it so that it knows it has done as you wanted.

Practise this trick several times; praising after each successful result and gradually reducing the amount of left hand prompting until only the verbal and non-verbal cues become everything that’s necessary.

An important factor to take into account when training an older dog to do these tricks is that the dog will learn at its own pace.

Never scold the dog if he seems not to be learning, it is always better to be patient and give him/her more encouragement.