One of the best things about dog training is you can get creative and come up with some pretty unique tricks and combos to have fun with your dog! Well to help inspire you, in this post we’ll be discussing how to train 2 exciting tricks that will be sure to impress your friends!
So, the first one we’ll be discussing is the ‘Walking Leg Weave’, this is well known, and you may have also seen it in Heelwork to Music competitions! The second command you could call a ‘Toe Tap’ as essentially that’s what it is! This command is also seen in the dog training world!
The Walking Leg Weave
The walking leg weave is super fun to do with your dog! It basically consists of you walking whilst the dog weave in between your legs!
The great thing about the walking leg weave is you don’t really need to train any commands beforehand!
To start, have your dog on one side of you, then take a big enough step with your leg (forward) so that they can get through (it might also help to lift your heel if the dog is bigger). Then lure them through with a treat in your hand and reward.
Here’s some starting positions to note:
- If your dog is on your left, step forward with your right leg.
- If your dog is on your right, step forward with your left leg.
As our example, we’re going to pretend your dog started on your left side! So now your dog is on your right side after luring them once! You’re going to lure them again to your left side by walking forward with your left leg and luring them through with a treat!
Now keep repeating this but start gradually only giving them a treat once they’ve gone through twice! And then three times! Instead of a treat you could now start using a mark instead like ‘Yes’ or ‘Good’, so they know that even if they’re not getting a treat, they’re doing the right thing!
Once your dog seems to know what they’re doing, add a verbal cue whilst luring them through! Then after a while, try giving your verbal cue and not luring them, also use a visual cue and reward them after they go through!
Your verbal cue may be ‘weave’ or ‘through’ and your visual cue could be your hand signalling which side to go to!
Keep repeating this method until your dog seems to get it and can weave without you luring them and just with a visual and verbal cue!
From here, you can work on your speed of this command!
Please note, for most dogs this cannot be learnt in a day and have patience with them! Commands take different lengths of time to learn for each dog! This one will probably either take you days or weeks!
The most important thing to do is have fun!!
The Toe Tap
Now onto our second one! The toe tap is a fun trick where you put your foot out and your dog puts their paw on top! Then you switch feet and they put their paw on the other foot!
To start ensuring your dog knows these commands:
- Touch (Touch an object with their paw on command)
- Other one (When pawing, switch to the other paw)
- Paw (offer their paw, also known as ‘shake’)
- Wait (wait for something)
Knowing these will make this command simple and easy to learn!
Firstly, you want to put one foot out to your dog, then ask them to ‘touch’ and they should put their paw on your foot! Then reward and repeat!
Once your dog knows how to simply touch your foot, you can start adding in your verbal cue! You may want to change it to something like ‘Toes’ or you could just keep the ‘touch’ command!
And that’s the basics! Yeh seriously. If you want a simple toe tap, then that’s all you’ve got to do! However, if you want your toe tap to be a little bit neater and slightly more advanced, here’s what to do next:
Now we’re going to learn how to switch paws! After doing one toe tap on your right foot (we’re doing right for our example), now put out your left foot, and ask the dog to touch!
There could be two different outcomes from this, your dog uses the same paw to touch your left foot as your right foot or they used the other paw!
Preferably most people want their dog to do the opposite paw that they last did but if you don’t mind then you can stop here and skip to our conclusion!
Pretending they offered their left paw when you did right foot, if they offer left paw again for your left foot, here’s where you add in your ‘other one’ command.
If your dog already knows this well, they should associate with switching paws and instead paw your left foot with their right paw!
Now keep changing from right foot to left foot and correct your dog with ‘other one’ if they offer you the paw you don’t want!
And that’s it! You now know the toe tap! So, you may be wondering, ‘Why did I need to know paw and wait as stated above?’. Well, we added those into the list for specific reasons!
Wait is useful if your dog immediately removes their paw after touching your foot and paw might be useful for dogs that aren’t associating the touch command with touching your foot!
And again, remember to be patient with your dog and just focus on having fun!
So that’s our two fun commands! We hope you and your pooch can really enjoy training these! Of course, have fun and don’t rush the commands so that your dog can enjoy the training sessions!
Give us feedback or ask a question!