Tricks
How to teach a dog to spin on cue
A tight, happy circle each way on a word and a finger twirl — no treat in the luring hand.
What “spin” actually means
In Proof this is a skill in its own right, because simple, flashy, and a genuinely useful warm-up before sport or grooming.
The stages
These steps are a draft pending review by a credentialed trainer. They describe standard positive-reinforcement marker training; the app carries the same notice on every session screen.
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Stage 1 — Lured circle
Goal: Dog follows the lure in a full smooth circle each way
- Treat at the nose, draw a flat, generous circle. Mark at completion, pay.
- Both directions from day one — dogs have a stiff side too.
- Shrink the lure to a small finger twirl, then add "spin" and "twirl" for the two directions.
If it goes wrong
- Dog loses the lure halfway and unwinds? Mark and pay the half-circle for a few reps, then ask for three-quarters.
- One direction is fine, the other falls apart? Normal stiffness — double the reps on the hard side at half speed.
How long does it take?
Most foundation skills reach their bar in two to four weeks of short daily sessions. Adolescence can temporarily un-stick anything, which is normal.
Proof does not put a timeline on an individual skill, and neither should anything else — the honest answer depends on the dog in front of you, how often you practise, and where you practise. What it does instead is measure: every session records how many reps landed, so progress is a number rather than a feeling.
Proving it in 3 different places
A behaviour that only works in the kitchen is situational, not trained. Spin counts as proven in Proof once it clears the bar above at the top stage in 3 genuinely different contexts:
- Indoors — the quiet room where everything works
- Garden — outdoors, but home turf
- Street — pavements, traffic, passing people
- Park — other dogs, long grass, real distraction
- Somewhere new — a place the dog has never worked before
Proof also expires. Leave a proven skill for two months without asking for it and it returns to the daily plan as a refresher, because that is what actually happens to trained behaviour.