There’s one common trick that you should never teach to your dog, according to an expert trainer.
Will Atherton is a canine behaviourist who has gained a massive following of more than 900,000 on TikTok for his dog training tips. He also assists his audience in choosing the right dog breed for them.
In a recent video, Will discussed tricks and highlighted one in particular that he advises dog owners to avoid, despite its popularity. “This is a trick that I would never teach my own dog,” Will explained.
“Now I completely get it. When you’re getting your dog and you want to train them, I know you want to teach them some fun tricks. But the trick that I always tell people to avoid is the paw trick.”
The “paw trick” involves a dog offering its paw to its owner, akin to a human handshake. While acknowledging that it’s “very easy” to teach and can be a “nice thing to show off to your friends”, Will pointed out a significant downside to this trick.
He continued: “However, dogs do something that I like to call ‘offering behaviours’. If you give your dog a treat every time you teach them to do paw, which is how you should teach them to do paw, when they want a treat or they want some attention, they will offer a behaviour.”
Will warned that this could lead to a dog “swatting at you” whenever it wants attention or food, which can be “quite dangerous” if you own a larger breed. Will concluded: “I would much rather a dog offer a behaviour of sitting and waiting calmly with good manners, than offering a behaviour of swatting at me.”
Will’s video has since been viewed more than 460,000 times, and people commented to share their own experiences with the “paw trick”. One said: “Taught my dog paw 10 years ago. He’s now 11 and I get hit every time I stop stroking him.”
Another said: “We taught our dog paw and shake […] and he is correct, everytime we have a treat he does one of them to try and get it.”