Shake a paw. Everyone wants their dog to shake, right? Strangers often walk up to dogs expecting them to "shake."

Shake a paw is cute and very easy to teach a dog to do. It can be evolved into other cute behaviors like high five and waving. So how do you teach a dog to shake? Patience, much like many other behaviors; you need to wait until your dog offers a behavior. The best way to ingrain a behavior is for the dog to figure it out themselves. That means no cheating. No grabbing their foot and shaking their paw for them.

The way that I teach the shake exercise utilizes both lure and shape training. The lure is a piece food in the hand and the shape is waiting for the dog to paw the food.

Here's how

Put a small piece of food (not too high value) in the palm of your hand and cover it firmly with your thumb.
Place your hand on the floor near your dog with your palm facing up.
You can break the exercise down into many baby steps but I normally prefer to wait for the pawing action. But if a dog is easily frustrated I will then break the behavior down into baby steps (next blog) to avoid this.
Wait for dog to paw at your hand and immediately open hand, rewarding dog.
Do this until the dog is reliably pawing at the hand immediately.
Then remove the food from the hand and put it into your other hand and behind your back.
Place the empty hand on the ground in the same position with thumb on palm and wait.
As soon as the dog paws at the hand reward them with food from the other hand. Repeat.
Next paw attempt, hold your dog's paw gently while rewarding.
Move hand up from the ground and remove thumb from palm
Add verbal cue "shake, give me paw" etc.
Gently add a full foot handshake while rewarding.
Be careful to never grab the dog's foot negatively (too hard, too long, too much shake). This could create an unwillingness to continue.

So there you have it, the shake.

Yogi didn't get the shake behavior at my house on this day as we only worked for a few minutes on it. I was showing his Mom what to do when she went home. After a few moments at home working on it Yogi's Mom accomplished the highly prized "shake."

Trying to nudge the treat out of my hand

You can evolve this behavior to the high five and wave by simply moving your hand slowly to different positions and rewarding.