Crufts may be cancelled this year but there’s always still time for puppy training!

No need for expensive puppy classes, we’ve spoken to Ali Smith, professional dog trainer at Rebarkable, a dog training company based in Maryland, USA. Ali, who is originally from Basildon, Essex, gave us her top-five tricks to teach your dog:

Sit

“For practicality, you really want a solid sit, a great loose lead walk and I love a great recall.

“Sit is a basic one but it’s a very important one. A great sit can take the place of a stay, a settle, emergency stops, and mitigate a whole bunch of behaviours like jumping up before they even start.

“This one usually starts by luring your dog’s head upwards with a treat – as their heads go up, their bums tend to go down.

“Praise and reward for achieving (or steps towards) and keep advancing that by adding in new challenges.

“Change the duration you expect the sit for and change the distance between you and puppy when you give the cue. After you give the cue, try to add in a distraction, such as doing it in a busy park, by a road or when someone new walks into your home!

“Slowly working up distance, duration and distraction will help you to make sure that this sit will work anywhere and everywhere.”

Loose lead

“This is best done with a harness and a flat lead ‑ begin by coaxing pup to your side and praise and reward for being there. Initially, start in a low distraction environment and walk with a treat in your hand slightly in front of puppy’s nose. Praise quickly and reward often for this stage.

“Build up the time spent on a loose lead, even if it’s a step at a time. If your pup begins to pull ahead, stop, stand still and wait for them to pay attention. Praise for their attention returning to you and coax them back to you.

“Repeat the process lots and lots and again, change up your expectations depending on successes, vary distance, distraction and uration to increase the challenge.”

Recall

“Recall is started with a long line (like a horse lunge line) and a harness. Start by letting them walk away from you a little and excitedly calling them back. Normally, they’ll respond quite quickly with a short distance and you can praise and reward.

“The more you practice the stronger this will get. Slowly increase the distance you give them with the long line and practice that recall in lots of environments.

“Only when you feel confident (and not before!), allow the long line to trail on the floor and keep practicing (if they decide not to listen, don’t grab for the line, just step on it!).

“As this consistently goes well, it may be time to take the long line off entirely and see your successfully-recalling puppy enjoy the world around them!”

Spin

“As a more fun one, you can do spin! Spin is really fun to show off to friends and family and always amps up the cute factor.

“To start, stand in front of your dog, treats at the ready. Lure them in a circle with the treat and when they get back to facing you? Praise and reward.

“Repeat this a few times so they start to understand exactly what the cue means. Then begin to increase the distance between your dog and the lured treat and slowly turn the lure into a gesture or just a verbal cue.

“Spin should be one direction only! I use spin and backwards for clock and anti-clockwise but get inventive!”

Leg weave

“Leg weaves are really fun, even if you have a big dog and not long legs (my advice here is go slow!).

“Step forwards with one foot and lure your puppy through your legs, using your cue as you do – I use ‘through’, cues should be simple and one word as much as possible. Praise and reward when they reach the other side.

“Then take another step forwards (big steps to start, make it really easy) and ask for a through and lure again to see your dog start to weave through your legs. Slowly build on your speed and fade the reward out from every leg to every second or third and soon you and Fido will be doing leg weaves down the hallway or through the garden!”