I have found that the number one rule to successful training is “DON’T OVERTHINK what your trying to teach your dog, use common sense and never tease. Keep it simple, so BOTH of you don’t get discouraged, let me explain. You want to teach your dog the names of it’s toys, great! Dogs like kids just love a new toy, because it captures their attention and curiosity, which is just perfect for an easy learning environment. Before giving your dog it’s new toy, you should gather up all of it’s other toy’s and put them away where they can not retrieved. With that done, now give your dog the new toy and say something like, “Oh my goodness, what do you have? Do you have a new toy?” Now is when you can introduce the name of whatever you have given your pet. So, as example, my dog has a little stuffed dog with a red hat. We named this toy, “MR. RED HAT”. To teach her this name, when giving her this new toy make a big fuss over it, continue to say to your dog, “Are you playing with MR. RED HAT?” “Do you like MR. RED HAT? Do you have MR. RED HAT?” Because you are so excited over this new toy, so shall your dog be as well. Consistency is very important. Now after a couple of days of you making a big fuss over “MR. RED HAT” you can say to your dog, “Hey, go get MR. RED HAT and lets play.” In the absence of all the other toys being packed away and out of reach, your dog may just surprise you and go grab “MR. RED HAT.” After about a week of your dog understanding who MR. RED HAT is, now is the time to unpack one of your dogs old toys and re-introduce THAT toy with a name of your choosing. Just repeat until ALL the old toys have names! Before you know it, you will be just sitting on the couch and asking your dog to go find one toy after another and when you act happy and impressed, your dog will be more than happy to keep learning NEW things.
Here is another “Don’t overthink this trick” idea for you. This is a trick that your dog can teach you. If your pet does something fairly frequently without you asking them to do that action, SIMPLY NAME THAT ACTION and it becomes a trick that you never had to teach! Let me explain. When I take my Border Collie for a run, after a short time she likes to lay down in the grass and then squirm around on her back. Every time that I would see her do this I would say, “SHOW ME YOUR BELLY” and keep saying it as she was doing just that. Soon she associated the two together and now I just have to ask her to show her belly, and she does. This is one of many “Tricks” that I never taught her to do. Good Luck!

I have two 3 month old black Labrador female pups. Both pups are very smart. Stay is a tricky thing for them but it’s getting better and better. They know sit, come, belly down, belly crawl. Rewards and praise. Are we on target for learning for these young pups. Using verbal and hand signals.