Trick of The Week

A dog who quickly begins lifting latches and pulling drawers open on a new food puzzle toy, or cleverly discovers that picking it up and tossing it yields the same result, won't find much of a challenge in that toy on the second go-around. Problem-solving animals need novel opportunities to conquer puzzles and learn new things. Imagine playing a video game on the same level forever, or never having to adjust a new recipe to get it just right. We seek interesting challenges, and so do our dogs.

While it is important to learn how to train skills through each phase of training including teaching, cue introduction, repetition and proofing, there is also value in training new skills frequently, even if those skills are throwaway behaviors which we don't need to train to perfection. When we train our dogs a new skill, we offer a new challenge.

Training a completely new skill every few days can be a fun challenge. The more new skills dogs learn, the quicker they pick up on each new skill. The Trick of the Week challenge is one way to come up with new ideas. I am not just picking any trick; I am selecting tricks that dogs are not very likely to know already and tricks that allow plenty of room for trainers (that’s you) to improvise.

I have a vision of collaboratively coming up with the most creative, unique ways to train every new behavior we can come up with. This is about embracing the fact that there are so many different ways to train the same trick. It's also about our own creative perspectives. While I might see a trick looking like one thing, you might see it as something else entirely. In addition to our regular training schedules, we are adding time for free play with trickovation, which I think is so important. Trickovation is time with your dog to get into your best training mindset and have fun.

While you might have obedience skills to work on with your dog, with just a few minutes of extra training every few days, you can compliment your efforts with trickovation.

Training new skills rather than repeating the same ones over and over provides our problem-solving animals with more cognitive challenges, and it does the same for us too. Training new skills helps dogs become shaping-savvy, learning to offer behaviors. It helps improve the way we train and communicate with our dogs, and it offers a bonding opportunity.

The challenge is all about coming up with new tricks to try. Some will work out, while others won’t. Some tricks will be ones you have seen before, but hopefully most will not. This is a challenge for anyone. You can share your progress with us or play on your own.

Trick of The Week is Happening on our Instagram throughout 2024. Find MJ’s Pet Training Academy, LLC on instagram @mjspetacademy

I can’t wait to train dog tricks with you!

-MJ