I started training Cooper a few days after I got him when he was 8 weeks old. I would ask him to sit, and when he did I would praise him and give him a piece of chicken. He figured it out very fast! I used this same method to teach him sit, down, come, watch me, leave it, drop it, wait, and shake hands. When I wanted to teach him his first advanced trick - "Where's your tongue?" - at three months old, I decided to start using clicker training so I could "capture" the behavior. From then on I have almost always used the clicker to teach him new commands. Once he learns the command I stop using the clicker. For tricks that have lots of steps, like "Put your toys away" or "Shape sorter," I split the trick into parts and reward him when he completes each part. For example, for "put your toys away" I first taught him drop it. I almost always ask Cooper to do things instead of commanding him to. There are some situations where I have to sound a bit more assertive, but normally when he's learning a new trick or performing tricks he responds better to being asked (this isn't true for every dog).
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