"Shake" is usually an easy trick to teach dogs, because some dogs will naturally paw you to get your attention. Not this dog though. First i tried hiding a treat in my palm to see if it would paw it.. (nope) then under a towel to see if it woudl paw it (nope) perhaps a cup (nope)... I waited and waited... but this dog never used its paws for anything other than for carrying it's weight!
This is quite serious... so i went down to the basics...
How I teached a dog to Shake-a paw:First I chose a paw to work with,
-I lured it onto a book and when it had that one paw on the book, I gave it a treat.
-When it did this reliably, i slowly added mroe books so it would actually have to lift it's paw to place it on the pile of books
-Then as it lifted it's paw, i would put my hand out before it reached the books and reward whenever the dog's paw touched my hand.
-Then do it without the books in the way-TA DA!
Now this dog won't stop shaking it's paw when you have a treat =)
Note: i didn't just grab the paw and reward.. because i wanted the dog to do the motions itself and reach out. Plus for a dog that doesn't like it's paws handled, that method could result in a dog that cringes and retracts it's paws when the command is given, because it has associated the command with someone grabbing it's paws -complete opposite of what u want!
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