Your dog giving you a high-five is something that every household dog should know. And to be honest with you, everybody that owns a dog is able to teach this trick in only 5 to 10 minutes. It only requires a couple of treats and some time and effort on the part of the dog owner.

The first thing that you want to do to teach your dog to give you a high-five is to bring your dog in a quiet environment where you can train him without any distractions. I recommend that you practice in your living room or somewhere that your dog is accustomed to. If you try to train him outside or in a place that your dog doesn't know well, then he will be distracted by the many different smells and sounds of the environment. The goal is to get your dog to focus on you and the training at hand.

Place your dog in a sit position and ask him to shake paw. If your dog doesn't know how to shake paw yet, then all you have to do is grab his paw and then give him a treat. After a couple of times he will learn that lifting his paw is what earns him the treat.

Then you will want to move your hand higher and higher and put your palm towards him in a high-five manner. Your dog will begin to differentiate between the shake a paw and the high-five depending on how your hand is positioned. You want to go from the shake a paw position and gradually move to a high-five position.

The most important thing to do while training your dog is to reinforce him with treats, lots of encouraging praise and petting him anytime that he does something that you like. To better the accuracy of your training, you can use what is called a marker signal which tells the dog exactly which behavior earned him the reinforcement. For example while you train your dog you can say the word yes at exactly the moment which your dog touches your hand with his paw.

Once your dog learns your hands signal and can easily give you a high five then you need to incorporate a verbal command. This command can be anything but it is usually the name of the trick. In this example the command high-five would be well suited. To really do this successfully, you will need to say your command high-five just as your dog moves his paw towards your hand. We're talking about a fraction of a second here but the closer your command is given to the behavior then the quicker your dog will learn it.

Once your dog has gotten the hang of giving you a high-five, you can get him to do it even more spectacularly. Get him to do it from a standing position on his hind legs. This has the appearance that your dog is actually jumping up to give you a high five. To do this all you have to do is move your hand higher and higher until your dog performs the trick flawlessly.