How to Create Your First Trick Routine

If you have been teaching your dog a few tricks, you can take it to the next level by creating a small trick routine, regardless of their age. Trick routines are a great way to boost your dog's confidence with training in general and their trick skills.

The Novice Trick Dog title only requires ten distinct trick cues, such as crawl, shake, and high five, so you can also earn titles with beginner skills. Putting tricks into a small routine is a great way to start preparing yourself and your dog for the more advanced levels, where fluidity of performance does start to matter. However, earning this beginner title does not require an organized routine. Additionally, trick routines are a fun way to entertain and impress your friends and family.


What Is a Dog Trick Routine? A dog trick routine is a series of tricks that are arranged in a series to create a small performance. You can perform a routine in front of a live audience, online, or at home. The Elite Performer Trick Title's trick routines can include just the dog and handler, music, or a story. As long as you and your dog are having fun, there is no wrong way to develop a trick routine.


Choosing Your Routine's Tricks When creating your dog's first trick routine, you should concentrate on performing tricks that your dog is familiar with and enjoys. You will begin to notice certain tricks that they seem to prefer as you work on trick training. Include these cues in your dog's routine for its first trick.


Try not to choose too many tricks that your dog typically struggles with when creating a routine because doing so could disrupt the flow of tricks and be demoralizing for both you and your dog. Instead, practice those difficult tricks outside of your regular routines and add them in after your dog has mastered them.


Building a Longer Routine Before adding tricks, you want to improve your dog's endurance so that he can perform multiple tricks at once. Start with the well-known tricks you picked, and reward them for each successful trick. The more your dog improves, the more you can change the rate of reinforcement. For example, you might give your dog a treat after each trick, or you might ask for several tricks before giving him a treat. Your dog will remain engaged and interested as a result of this. The objective is to maintain your dog's enthusiasm, not to see how many consecutive tricks you can ask for before treating.


Don't be afraid to incorporate reward breaks into the routine because one of the great things about tricks as a sport is that you can reward mid-routine even at the highest levels of competition.


Putting It All Together After selecting the tricks for your dog's routine, you should think about how the tricks will flow. You are not required to use a trick routine to tell a "story" during the initial levels of Trick Dog. You can instead just concentrate on creating a pleasant flow for you and your dog.


Think about how prop-based tricks might work together. To avoid having to run back and forth across a training area, you should perform tricks with similar props in the same area. You might also want to think about your dog's personality.

If your dog doesn't like to get up from a sit, consider spacing out stationary tricks like sitting or laying down or not teaching them at all to keep their energy up. Make sure to increase your rate of reinforcement following any tricks that slow your dog down.


Remember to Have Fun Trick Dog, like all dog sports, ought to be a fun and playful activity. The purpose of tricks is to teach your dog new skills that they enjoy and look forward to learning, keeping accessibility in mind.


It's time to practice your routine after you've choreographed it! Utilizing a lot of praise and positive reinforcement for your dog, keep your practice sessions short and enjoyable. When it comes to your dog's routine, try to be flexible. If you think it would work better within the routine, don't be afraid to change things up, change the order of the tricks, or use different tricks. Everything is a learning process.

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