Can you remember the very first thing you ever trained a dog to do and how you went about

doing it? Now, that question depends on how long you've been training dogs,

I bet. For me, the very first thing I ever trained a dog to do was my poodle, Tina. It's our

family poodle when I was, I was super young kid and I trained her to dance on her hind legs

using a lure, a food lure. Hi, I'm Susan Garrett.

Welcome to Shape by Dog. Today, it's all about tricks and why I think it's so incredibly

important that all dogs learn how to do a handful of tricks. And I'm going to share with you my three favorites that I

like to teach probably some of the three first things that I teach my dogs or puppies when I get

them. Definitely three of the earliest tricks I teach them. I'm going to share with you why I think

it's so critically important that all dogs have tricks and I'm going to share like

this epiphany moment I had when I was teaching tricks.

I'd like you to think for a moment how you train your dog and what you're feeling.

Let's say you're teaching like a sit or a down or a heel beside you, walk beside you. Think about how you go out doing it, what you're

feeling, how focused you are or serious you are. Compare that to when you're teaching your dog a

trick. What I have observed is that people tend to be more joyful and stress-free when they're

shaping a trick. And I've always questioned why. Like, maybe the outcome isn't as important,

or it could be the early foundation of how you trained those other things. And, you know,

as Harvey McKay says that the quality

of our life is dictated by the quality of our relationships and the quality of our relationships

with our dogs is dictated by how we train and the interactions that we have in that moment

of training. And that's one of the big reasons why I think training tricks is so important

because people tend to be more joyful. They tend to be more playful because they don't have

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