Teaching Your Dog Fun Tricks: The Kit
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Your dog has sit and shake and you are bored of both. Trick training stalls in the same place for nearly everyone: the dog understands a lure in your hand and nothing else, so every new behavior starts from scratch with food under its nose. A hand held target fixes that, and the two bags of treats here exist so the first clean repetition gets paid differently from the nine sloppy ones before it.
Where this fits in a trick program
You already own a pouch and a reward your dog likes. What is missing is a thing to touch and a way to mark the moment the trick lands, which is the gap between knowing the method and running it well. Our beginner guide to teaching tricks covers the shaping itself, trick by trick, and this page only names the gear that makes it quicker.
A target, two reward tiers and a lick toy
The eStick is SodaPup's hand held lick stick, made from TPE, in four designs: a yellow Beehive, a pink Ice Cream Cone, a light blue Flower and a pastel purple Waffle. You hold it out, the dog touches or licks it, and you have a target that is not your hand, which matters the first time you want the dog to spin away from you rather than into you. It goes on the top rack of the dishwasher and can be frozen ahead of a session. Skip it if your dog already targets a closed fist reliably, since the stick is there to give you distance from your own hand. SodaPup/True Dogs, LLC items are sold and shipped by SodaPup/True Dogs, LLC through Shopify Collective and arrive separately.
Our freeze dried cheddar cheese bites are the rapid fire tier. One ingredient, freeze dried in small batches in Malvern, one 8 ounce bag, with crude protein listed at a minimum of 34 percent and roughly 153.7 kcal per ounce. Trick work burns through treats faster than anything else you do with a dog, which is why the bag in this kit is the big one and why the pieces are small enough to hand over ten times in a minute.
Anchovies are the second tier and they only come out when the whole trick happens. One ingredient, one 2 ounce bag, crude protein listed at a minimum of 67 percent and about 83.1 kcal an ounce. A dog that gets anchovy for the first complete spin and cheddar for the eight partial ones learns the difference faster than a dog paid the same for everything. Keep them in a separate pocket, because a pouch that smells of anchovy makes the cheddar less interesting.
The Ubbe from Up Dog Shop is the end of the session. It is a lick toy rather than a flat mat, with a shape that moves when a dog noses it and an interlocking body that comes apart so you can rinse the inside after something sticky. Up Dog Shop recommends it for crate rest, quiet downtime and slower snacking. Load it, hand it over, and let the dog come down from a training session without you having to do anything else. Skip it if your dog settles on its own once the treats stop, since this is a wind down tool rather than a training one. Up Dog Shop items are sold and shipped by Up Dog Shop through Shopify Collective and arrive separately.
What we left out
No clicker. Plenty of trainers swear by one and we have nothing against them, but a clicker is a marker you have to learn to time, and the target stick plus a clean verbal marker gets a beginner further in the first month. We also left out a treat pouch, on the assumption that anyone teaching a second trick already owns one.
Running a session
Five minutes, twice a day, beats twenty minutes on a Sunday. Start with the eStick at nose height and pay every touch with cheddar until the dog offers the touch without being asked. Then move the stick: to the left, low to the floor, above the dog's head, and you have the beginnings of a spin, a bow and a sit pretty. The anchovy comes out the first time the dog completes the shape without you moving the stick. Finish by loading the Ubbe and putting it down, because ending on a settled dog is what makes the next session easy.
What this replaces
A hand full of food and a lot of repetition. Luring works, but a dog lured through every repetition tends to keep waiting for the hand, and the target gives you something to fade instead. The second tier of treats also replaces the trap of using better food for everything, which leaves you nothing to reach for when the trick gets hard.
Questions
Owners starting a second or third trick tend to ask the same few things.
My dog licks the stick instead of touching it. Does that matter?
No. A lick is a touch as far as the behavior goes, and loading the stick with something soft is how most dogs learn what it is for. Once the dog goes to it reliably you can offer it clean and pay from the other hand.
How long before I can drop the target?
For most dogs, a week or two of short sessions on one trick. Fade it by making the stick smaller in the picture: hold it lower, move it less, then present an empty hand in the same place and pay the same behavior.
Is the book worth adding?
If you would rather work a list than invent tricks, yes. Books by splitShops sells a paperback of 11 enrichment games built for physical and mental exercise, and it gives you a running order for a month. Books by splitShops items are sold and shipped by Books by splitShops through Shopify Collective and arrive separately.
Related guides
The training cluster lists the rest of these, and the bundle guides hub holds every kit we publish. To pick a reward by protein or piece size, use Explore, or start from the freeze dried dog treats we make ourselves.
