Luring to Get Behaviors

Luring is great for getting the dog to move or assume a position, such as luring into a sit or down, or luring them to walk alongside you.

The drawback to luring is that it is easy to get stuck with luring so that the dog only does the behavior when you have food held in front of their nose or in your hand. Sometimes dogs don't learn what we are trying to teach, for instance instead of learning to walk alongside you the dog learns to follow your fingers. You may not realize this until you test the learning when trying to walk your dog while carrying a bag of groceries.

Gimme here:  When I was a very young puppy, my person used food on the end of my nose to help me find my way over the dogwalk in our front yard.  She was careful to start out very low so I didn't get scared.  Before long I was running alongside my person over the dogwalk.  She's been making it taller and I still have a lot of fun with it.  She always gives me treats for running over it.  Sometimes when she is mowing the lawn I try to get her attention so she will see when I run over my dogwalk.  Sometimes I get treats and sometimes she tosses a stick for me.  I love my dogwalk.

Try to think of "Lure a little", so that you only lure with food in your hand a few times (five times maximum). To lure a behavior, hold a treat in front of your dog's nose and without letting him eat it, use it as a "nose magnet," since she'll probably follow it everywhere. After that lure with an empty hand (still smelly from holding the previous treat).  I deliver a treat to the luring hand from the other hand and then use the luring hand to deliver the treat to my dog (this way the luring hand stays in front of the dog the whole time).  After doing it that way about five times, then I start using the luring hand to get the treat out of my treat bag and deliver it to the dog.  Initially you might have to meet the luring hand halfway with the other hand until the dog understands that she still needs to stay there and wait for the treat to come to her.  Then you will need to "fade" your luring hand (make it less obvious until it isn't needed) in a gradual process, until it is simply a hand signal.

You can lure a sit by slowly moving the treat from the nose back towards the top of the head. Keep it low, so the dog doesn't jump up. As soon as he sits, click and treat. If the dog is trying everything but sitting, at first click/treat for lowering back legs and butt. Then see if you can gradually shape for a full sit.  Be sure not to lure too fast so that you lose the dog.  Be careful to fade the luring gradually so that it becomes the hand signal for your dog’s trick.

You can lure the dog to walk alongside you and gradually fade your hand up out of nose range and closer to your waist as if holding a leash.

Lure a Trick
I recommend luring a trick for your dog.  That is a good way to practice a training method so you can relax and enjoy the process, before you use luring for something important.  Remember, "important" is a human point of view; its all tricks to your dog.  Speaking of tricks, here's a list of possible tricks to lure:

spin
around you
over or under an obstacle
onto an obstacle
weave under the legs - stationary
weave through legs walking
zig-zag dance (turn away)
low crawl (butt stays down)
high crawl (butt up like bow)
ballerina (stand up)
sit up and beg
keep away... (a great heeling game, just try to get away from your dog once s/he knows the game)
dig on the floor (food under tape)
roll-over
dead bug (on back feet in air)
cha-cha (dog walks behind you with feet on your bum or back)
left and right
zoob-zoob-zoom

Remember: You are limited only by your own creativity.