Trick - Spin

[Wooferhound]

1) Place a tasty treat in front of your dogs nose and encourage your dog to follow the food by moving the treat from his nose around in a big circle to his tail, with verbal praise for all correct movements

2) When your dog is willingly following the treats in a full circle stop luring and start using your hand only, remembering to offer lots of verbal praise in all the right places.

3) If your dog is happily spinning in one direction for varying lengths of time, start teaching the opposite direction.

4) You may very well have to go right back to the beginning to teach the other direction, but do remember to put in a verbal cue (command) with the new direction. So for instance, use ‘Spin’ for left and ‘other way’ for right.

5) Using the correct hand for the correct side will also be beneficial, in other words use your left hand for left spins and right hand for right spins. To keep things simple remember to spin your hand away from you for both directions (anti clockwise = left, clockwise = right).

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Many dogs get very excited with this new trick, and can start to bark. This behaviour is fine with me personally, it helps dogs to ‘let off steam’ in a positive and controlled manner. For all pet dogs this kind of trick is great, not so good for those wishing to compete with their dogs, I will leave this for you to either encourage, or indeed, discourage, either way, please enjoy!