What’s Your Favorite “Trick” to Teach Your Dog
I’m reposting “Take a Bow for Teaching a Play Bow” from September, 2019 (because, well, see “Meanwhile” below). But I’m glad I found it, because I would love to start a conversation along the lines of: “If you could only teach your dog one “trick,” what would it be? Of course, that brings up the question of what is the difference between a “trick” and any other behavior we want to elicit, but we can add that into the discussion if we want.
Here’s from 9/2019: Our good friend Debby G came to visit recently, with a report on how her dog Monty was doing. Monty was found on a porch a year ago spring, starving and close to death. Here’s a photo of the poor thing soon after he was found.
Not surprisingly, although physically healthy now, Monty has a lot of fears, including even the sight of another dog. The good news is that Debby is a dedicated dog owner, and that she has a great team of trainers helping her. Her primary goal is to walk Monty down the street without him freaking out every time he sees another dog. They are making good progress, walking in parallel with one of those worth-his-weight-in-gold Goldendoodles who is stable, unreactive and probably hoarding dog food to deliver to rescue organizations if he could just get a hold of the car keys. I had only a few thoughts to add to the treatment plan, and one of them was teaching a play bow. As I said in a 3/19 post about working with fearful dogs:
It’s hard to be fearful when you’re playing, and that’s true for both people and dogs. One of my favorite cues to teach nervous dogs is to Take a Bow . . . “bowing” is a play solicitation gesture to dogs, and it’s hard to be nervous and playful at the same time.
Monty reminded me that my absolute, all-time favorite trick to teach ANY dog is a play bow. I’m not actually sure why we call it a trick, since it’s no different than a sit or down–we simply put something that dogs do anyway on cue, right? Sit and down themselves are interesting, in that they ask a dog, in some ways, to squelch it’s forward movement, to pause, to contain itself. They are great ways to get a dog’s attention, and, let’s be honest, to get him under control.
But a play bow? Ah, hello fun! The dog may move down and backwards, but the move is friendly, relaxed, and an invitation for lots of action in the near future. Putting a play bow on cue has so many benefits that if I were queen I’d decree it be a part of every dog training class in the universe. (Is it in yours?)
The benefits of putting a play bow on cue are many:
THEY RELAX NERVOUS DOGS As I mentioned earlier, asking a dog to do a play bow automatically leads to relaxation. I taught Willie to play bow on cue, and used it when we were working on his response to unfamiliar dogs. Not only was it successful in that context, but after a while he began doing it on his own when he was beginning to feel stressed. At least that was my strong impression. Besides being an action integrally involved in play, a play bow also asks the dog to stretch and relax his muscles, which leads to another one of its benefits:
IT’S GOOD FOR YOUR DOG’S BODY Dr. Chris Zink (PhD, DVM and goddess of canine sports medicine) writes and speaks often about the importance of stretching out a dog’s muscles before exercise. A play bow is a great way to do that. In “The power of the trick” she describes a range of exercises we can do to keep our dogs healthy, starting with a play bow before any physical activity. Dr. Zinke knows more than any one I know about canine physiology, structure and health, and if she says we should be asking our dogs to play bow before exercise, we would do well to pay attention. In her fantastic seminar at APDT in October, 2017, she explained that the vast majority of sports injuries are soft tissue injuries from over use, not from a specific incident, and are often undetected by both owner and GP veterinarian. Stretching can do a lot to prevent that kind of progressive injury.
ITS THE PERFECT “INCOMPATIBLE BEHAVIOR” Is your dog doing something you’d rather she didn’t? Barking out the window when another dog walks by? Scratching at the door to go outside? One of the best ways to deal with an unwelcome behavior is to teach the dog a different response to the trigger stimulus. See another dog out the window? Then do a play bow and good things will happen. Want to tell me you need to go potty? How about a play bow instead of etching into the door frame? Just be careful not to let it “say” too many things–be thoughtful about how you want your dog to use it to communicate with you.
IT MAKES US HAPPY Do you, or do you not smile when your dog does a play bow, even if just in your heart. Well, that’s enough right there, right?
If I wasn’t so happily busy training Maggie to run in Open, tending my ever expanding garden, and cooking things I probably shouldn’t (I’m talking to you, apple galette.) I’d have made a brilliant video for you illustrating how to teach a play bow. Ah, but I am, and I didn’t. Here’s one from Kikopup, my favorite source of training videos:
And if you have a dog who insists on lying down–here’s one on teaching a bow from a down:
And by the way, here’s Monty now… lucky boy, hey?
MEANWHILE, back on the farm, Spring 2025 Edition: Covid + COPD + Asthma + POTS + CFS . What could go wrong? It’s been a time. The great news is that I’m here and I’m breathing and only cough when I talk.
Jim got Covid too, but recovered fast. Along with his loving care and some great medical help, I had a dedicated nurse by my side almost all the time.
I’ll be fine, just gonna take some time. But Maggie Mae continues to delight me–here’s a photo from one of our great farm sitters, Dani P.
Seen along the road on the way to acupuncture. Adorsable.
The triumph of my asparagus planting: Six plants, planted two years ago. 5/6 plants dead, this one, trying its best.
Happy to say the strawberries are doing a lot better!
Liked the colors in this…
I’ll end with this, a pop up Columbine that should never have made it in such a high-use area. It gets smushed by the hose, stepped on, and abused daily, and yet, it’s thriving. A good reminder to us all.
Jump in with your favorite dog training tricks, we’ll all love to hear what you have to say.
Be well, friends.
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About the Author
Patricia B. McConnell, PhD, CAAB Emeritus is an applied animal behaviorist who has been working with, studying, and writing about dogs for over twenty-five years. She encourages your participation, believing that your voice adds greatly to its value. She enjoys reading every comment, and adds her own responses when she can.
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I hope you feel better soon- that is a lot to cope with all at once.
I taught Freddy Stretch. It started when I noticed that when I got up and stretched my back by bending forward to touch my toes he often would do a beautiful forward and backward stretch too. We made a game of stretching together – as you say it made me smile every time. Then I suggested to him it would make a good alternative to shouting at me to get out of my chair – my getting up was often followed by a mutual stretch, so it was a logical progression. From there it was a small step to Stretchy-stretchy-not-shouty-shouty in other situations, although as I creep (literally) closer to a hip replacement his frustration at my slowness at getting up and sorting out his latest crisis still sometimes overwhelms him, poor lad.
Paw shake’ was the first trick I taught my dog. It built trust and made further training much easier.
Most owners think that it’s cute to teach give paw but then they grab the foot and pump it up and down.
So, I amend this and get them to use their hand as a platform for the foot. Voila! The dog can choose to remove the foot at any time, there is no “snatch back” reflex so duration can be built and it’s a great start for teaching nail trims and checks for grass seeds etc
Sometimes, I work on a high five to cure the owner of grabbing the foot and then adjust their hand position once they are used to presenting a flat hand.
Oh, I’m so sorry to hear about your (and Jim’s) health travails! I hope you’re back to speed soon. Thank goodness for faithful furry nurses.
I do love play bows, but my favorite trick is “Touch” (dog’s nose to my fingers). It is such a simple way to give dogs agency by inviting them to move where we’d like instead of being hauled by the collar. It’s also a way to teach a number of fun tricks. Not to mention that many dogs enjoy it so it serves as a superb recall, as several clients have shared with me. I often share the link for “How to Teach Touch” from Kikopup.
My favorite experience with “touch” was when I took a relatively recently adopted dog to a friend’s house and he froze on the stairs leading to her walk-out basement/training area. I didn’t try to lure him down the steps with the cue, but simply asked him to turn his head to one side and then the other. That unstuck his brain and he cheerfully walked down.
By the way, Monty continues to thrive. He has even enjoyed a long-line walk with my gentle Aussie girl, and long-line walks with a number of dogs at my colleague’s wonderful facility where he boards.
So sorry to hear about your recent illnesses, hope you are recovering and feeling a bit more like yourself. Covid seems to be the gift that just keeps giving! I am recovering from open heart as well. Surgery was delayed until 4/25 but I am home and doing well, albeit staying away from humans so as not to get a respiratory illness that are abundant this spring…sneezing brings me to my knees regardless how hard I hug a pillow! Love the photos in this post, amazing when things thrive where planted regardless of the circumstances. Enjoying the care package you sent! Thank you Thank you Thank you! Learning so much about dogs and handling during this recovery thanks to you!
Take care of yourself and feel better soon!
I’m so glad you had some puppy care while recovering. Covid can be rough! Play bowing, on the other hand, not so ruff. I adopted a difficult dog about 6 years ago and his destructive, obstinate behavior started to get under my skin. So I signed us up for obedience 101 at a local positive-method trainer. While the instructor was teaching the class how to teach their dog to sit, I was off in my corner teaching mine how to play-bow (we had already nailed sit, stay, leave-it, down, come, etc.). I was really only there for my dog to practice his stuff and learn new stuff in a very distracting environment. And to try to bond with this little poop-head. I believe the play-bow instruction helped to reduce the aggression that he was exhibiting toward my foster dogs. He hasn’t worn a muzzle in years!
Oh gosh, feel better soon. Sending loads of healing energy your way. And bless your friend for rescuing Monty. His story touched my heart.
I taught ‘upside down’, which was a cue for my whippet to lie down and roll over with all paws in the air. It was great for veterinary exams and as a post-racing exercise so I could check his underside for injuries. It was a good stress reliever and my whippet could often be seen happily rolling around outside the ring at a rally trial.
I hope you are feeling better!
I’m taking this in another direction, but my favorite “trick” I taught my fearful, reactive dog was nosework/tracking (obviously a very rudimentary version). We did some DIY tracking trails and I taught him to find members of the family that I’d send out in my parents’ pasture to go and hide.
I’m not sure how much impact it has had on his fearfulness overall, but it did wonders for our relationship. It was something to focus on other than just behavioral work all the time, and it really let his strengths shine through and helped me see him differently.
I hope you feel better soon. Sometimes when it rains, it pours.
My favorite trick to teach my dogs is very silly, but it makes me laugh every time we do it. It’s called kiss the ring. Few months ago I found a platic ring with 2 inch chicken on it. One day Monty, reactive standard poodle, was “misbehaving” aka employing selective hearing, so I put the ring on my hand, told him to sit, then come and kiss the ring. Being smart, he did it and it became our little trick. Currently we are working on expanding the trick, I say “mum is the queen of universe, bow and kiss my ring” and Monty bows than kisses my ring.
Few months ago we rescued two more shelter dogs and both of them took to kissing the ring trick straight away. For some reason if I extend my hand with the ring on it, they seem to know what to do.
My goal is to wear a cape and crown one day, have all my peeps stand it line and bow and kiss my ring one after another.
I hope the healing continues apace. We love teaching tricks! Kinzie’s favorite is probably doing a rebound off my chest (not a behavior you necessarily want your dog offering, especially if it’s preceded by running at you from across the yard). But for practicality, in addition to the nose to hand touch mentioned above (first thing I teach a puppy), I love a chin rest. A chin rest in your hand is a great alternative calm behavior, and I love having Kinzie put her chin on a chair so that I can brush out her ridiculously floofy tail.
COVID is rough. So sorry you had to have it together. Our family had that last fall at CHAMPS (North American Dog Agility Council Championships.) I hope you’re 100% soon
I wound up capturing Marley’s stretch because he had started stretching on Rally courses.
I needed to get him to get it out of his system before we started. It didn’t take long to go from capturing to requesting. I’ll try going a bit further & see if we can turn it into a play now. And teach the reactive Hickory to do it, too.
Ugh, not the quintuple one would choose! I do hope you are better, and Nana has stayed on task. (I bet she hasn’t left your side.) Good for you that you have the oximeter there, it’s helpful to monitor vitals.
My all-time favorite trick was stop-drop-and-roll. (Like they taught kids years ago as part of a fire drill.) Olive had it down to perfection, but then her knee blew out (unrelated) and her hips were a bit wonky already, so we dropped it 😉 We incorporated gentle tricks as part of her PT, and we were lucky we had a good repertoire to build upon.
I do love a good play bow, Daisy does hers with a little hop on the way down. But what’s really nice is a bow and then a focus. She stays in the bow and looks up at me through her scruff. So darn fetching. I also love two paws—in a sit, offering up both paws at once. Good for balance and strength. I can’t pick a favorite; I love tricks of all kinds. The, er, trick now with Daisy is she moves so fast that getting her to slow it down a little for more involved tricks is challenging. Rolling over is our goal right now.
Think of the columbine!
I find the play bow very cute but really hard to teach. The video goes so fast. I did teach my dog when he is lying down paws in front—to cross his paws and then recross the other way—he looks very attentive. I can just cross my hands and recross as cues. No words needed. He likes to imitate.
A side comment, but I have been struck over the years at how delighted my dogs are if their Human offers a play bow. I have done it when life has become just a bit too serious – that moment in bringing up a puppy when you realise that what with worrying about socialisation charts and training schedules and just the right food and sufficiently frequent toilet trips and all the rest of it you have forgotten that this was meant to be fun, or in the doldrums after an illness or traumatic experience. Down on the floor on all fours, stretch arms out in a bow and let the dog decide how the game proceeds. It can be transformative!
I should teach Flash Gordon to bow. And teach it to Starshine! Thanks for the reminder. Great idea!
Not very original, but my favorite trick was teaching Echo to bring me a beer from the cooler.
Hoping you got all your health challenges out of the way for the rest of 2025… rough way to start springtime! :<(
I hope both you and Jim are on the road to much much better health!
And thank you for the shout out to Monty. He now does do better with some select dogs but is still wary of dogs in general. He has a wonderful behavior vet in Knoxville TN and a wonderful local trainer our Wendy.
Oh Trisha – those are all the Bad Letters afflicting you right now! Glad Jim recuperated quickly so he and Skip can share your care, while Maggie makes you laugh.
I’m with Wendy Katz (thanks for the Monty update, Wendy!) – “Touch” is always our first trick. Brand-New-To-Us Birdie has never been asked to learn anything, because she was “just” a much-loved ranch dog, shadowing her beloved owner. Now that we are her family, she’s beginning to learn, via Touch, that she can make us do things. “Hey look! I touch their hand and they give me a treat! How cool is that!”. We use Touch a couple of dozen times a day to move dogs around in space, teach other tricks, as a recall, at the vet’s office.
Hope you feel much better very soon!
Feel better. Here’s a cool training project you might be interested in.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-14/footrot-in-sheep-labrador-trained-detection/105262348
Thinking of you, Trisha, and hoping you feel hale and hearty again very soon!
When I taught classes at a shelter, many of my students had only just adopted their puppies and dogs. There was little to no connection between them yet. The first thing I taught every age was spin. It’s so easy to teach, either with luring or with a clicker. It’s a motion trick, which most dogs enjoy. Like bow, it makes the owners smile and laugh, which is a brilliant thing when you are really working on bonding. It gives the owner something cute to show off to family and friends, which also helps with bonding: the owners whose dogs can do something endearing tend to hang in there better through the tough times, which can feel frequent with a new dog. It’s a great feeling to hear your class laughing while they teach their happy dogs a simple, fun trick. I’ve always felt that, before you ask a new owner/dog team to work on any “serious” exercises, you should help them find a way to have simple fun together.
Patricia, I taught my dog to take a bow “brava!” a few months ago after reading your original blog post. It’s so funny to see my dog offer bows and it’s a cute party trick for friends and family. We are both lazy so I just clicked her bows until she was doing it all the time!
I never even thought about bow. Mabel our dog is quite anxious so this sounds like a great one to try. We have just learnt down though, so might be teaching from down at this rate!
Loved the line about how you can’t be scared if you are playing.