Preparing for the stage part 1. - Circle

This was Folkes first trick. Circling is not very impressive but he managed to impress some Pakistani exchange student guys down by Lake Trummen one night when I took him swimming.
He handed over the dummies like a god and shook afterwards on my command, I then had him do the circles and he got to retrieve the dummies as his reward. The Pakis were quite funny and came up to me and asked how on earth I got the dog to understand what I wanted him to do. They also said that they thought it was really strange that Swedish people brought their dogs with them everywhere as in Pakistan the only time you took your dog someplace was if you had a fighting dog and there was a competition.
We spoke for a while and I hope that Folke helped change their poor animal rights perspective at least a little bit. I think I might have hurt their masculinity though telling them to stop being such pussies around Folke - who completely ignored them and was all in on the tricks and retrieving. They were clearly not being used to any other dogs than fighting dogs and potential rabies carriers. I still think Folke got at least one inch of doubt into their stoneage values.

Circling is pretty easy to teach the dog - you use a toy or candy in front of the dog´s nose and then make a slooooow circle in the air so the dog follows your hand. Some dogs might take longer to understand that they are supposed to follow but as always the keyword is patience. I prefer to use hand plus word as that will make it easier to do the tricks from a distance but also to leave out the hand if you're up close and it doesn't suit the programme. Practice leaving out the hand some times and leaving out the word other times.