Dog Tricks: How To Teach Your Dog To Cross His Paws

A simple and adorable trick that you can easily teach your dog or puppy is to have her cross her paws. Many pets will do this by accident and it always puts a smile on my face when I witness this cute sitting posture.

You can easily teach train your dog to lie down and look elegant with its paws crossed by following these simple instructions:

Step 1: Start the exercise with your dog in the down position (of course he should already be trained to do so before attempting the ‘cross paws’ trick)

Step 2: Now have your dog offer his paw on command. If he does not know how to respond to this command yet, simply reach out and grab one of his paws. Be sure to click once (using a clicker) and offer a small treat each time. It is important that your dog remains in the down position while doing this.

While learning the fetch game, it is important that tasty treats be used in place of too much praise, as previously mentioned. The importance of praise hasn’t been firmly written on the chalkboard of his mind so until it is, give your pup what is known to be a positive reward stimulus – food!

(Some trainers might ask, But shouldn’t training take place in the head, and not the stomach? Yes that is true, but this is game time, remember?)

Try to get at least three fetching games (ten minutes each) into each day for three days in a row. These fetching drills should be in addition to a five or ten minute walk on the leash daily. We’re going to sneak in two commands while the puppy is having these game times and before he even realizes what’s happened, he will have been trained to respond to come and sit.

During your retrieving games, when your puppy has returned the play toy to you, place your left hand on his rear end and your right underneath his chin. Press lightly with your left hand while exerting a small amount of upward pressure with your right as you command sit.