Training Tutorial: How to Teach Your Dog to Orbit Around Your Body
Editor’s Note: This week we’re so excited to bring you a special training tutorial from our friend Emily Anderson, who has been training professionally for seven years. She lives with her two dogs Ripley (a Border Collie and Terrier mix) and Nova (a cattle dog and hound mix).
✅Step by Step: How to Teach Your Dog the Orbit Trick
Orbit is a fun, impressive looking trick where your dog rotates around, or “orbits,” your body, while walking backwards. It requires a lot of patience from you, as well as some really good rear end awareness from your dog. This trick is great to build into your next freestyle training routine if that is your thing!
Step One: Make sure your dog has good rear end awareness, which is critical for mastering this trick.
There are a couple of activities that you can do to build more rear end awareness:
Work on getting your dog to move backwards (try teaching them to back up and target something behind them).
Work on getting them to pivot - aka taking steps in a circle (try having them pivot while standing on top of a food bowl or a book).
Focusing on building solid rear end awareness is going to benefit your dog in so many ways and will ultimately play a big role in how easily you can teach this trick to your dog!
Step Two: With food in both of your hands, work to lure your dog backwards around your body in a circle (reward multiples times along the way).
To start, focus heavily on luring your dog with food through the motions. You’ll want to start to introduce your dog to the feeling of walking backwards around your body and maintaining a somewhat tight circle in the process. To do this:
Start with a treat in both hands. A medium value treat is probably best, but you know your dog! Just make sure it’s interesting enough to follow for a lure, but not so exciting that your dog gets frustrated.
Line your dog up on the side of your body where you’d like them to begin the orbit (I start on my left side).
With the treat at their nose, you’re going to bring your hand from their nose back towards their outside ear (so the treat would travel from their nose to their left ear, in this case).
Make sure they are following the treat lure, and as you move your hand toward their ear and out away from your hip, they should be stepping backwards.
The number of times you reward is really going to be dependent on your dog’s comfort with walking backwards; but, you want to make sure your rate of reinforcement is high to help them understand what you’re looking for and reduce any confusion or frustration! I would recommend rewarding your dog as they line up at your side and take their first step backwards, behind your body, and on your opposite side.
Always try to finish the orbit back on the original side where you started. Don’t forget to use your marker when they get there (I use a YES instead of a click from a clicker because of the treat luring) and give your dog a treat.
Keep working on this, so your dog builds confidence and becomes more fluid following the lures around your body.
As your dog begins to gain confidence with this step, add your verbal cue before you begin luring (I say “orbit”). Some people may prefer to use a hand cue rather than a verbal cue.
You can begin adding in multiple rotations and incorporating some speed (still using lures). When you add in multiple rotations, still reward at each necessary step! I like to use a “good!” or “go!” to encourage my dog to continue doing what they’re doing, and a “yes!” on the final rotation.
As I work on adding rotations, I also look for my dog to begin to take independent steps. While still keeping treats in both of my hands, I start to move the lure away from their nose and see if they can follow the lure from more of a distance.
💡 Tip: Starting with some type of barrier behind you or beside you (like a wall or a chair) can help with creating a tighter circle if your dog is backing away.
Step Three: Once your dog can confidently orbit around your body following treat lures in both of your hands, move to using only one lure to get them to complete the rotation.
Begin by getting your dog to start orbiting around you using a treat lure.
When your dog gets behind your back, instead of switching to a treat lure in your other hand, just use your hand (with no food) as a lure to get your dog back around to where they started.
When your dog is ready, try to get them to complete two or three orbits around your body. You can use a continuation marker like good or simply some praise along the way, but when they complete the two or three orbits, use your final marker followed by a treat to let them know they are done (I use “yes!”).
Our goal here is the same as above - look for independent steps where you don’t need to lure as heavily. As you add rotations, remember not to push your dog too quickly!
Step Four: The final step - no need to use treats!
When I fade away from using a treat lure, I still lure with my hands pretty heavily. You may even need to go back to using both hands to complete the rotation here. That is totally okay!
Go back to rewarding on your side after a single rotation, really building your dog’s confidence and understanding.
And then repeat the steps above, but with no treats!
Again, I like to use verbal praise or “good” and then “yes!” and reward when they complete the final orbit and have returned to the starting side.
As they gain that understanding, start to make your hand luring less obvious and work towards using a verbal cue only (trainer preference!).
🔧 How to Troubleshoot Teaching Your Dog to Orbit
This can be a difficult trick, and can take time! It took my dog, Nova, two years, on and off, for it to really click and I have still not completely faded her from one treat lure. You may need to bounce back and forth from two treats, to one, to hand luring, back to two treats, especially as you increase the difficulty here! Don’t rush your dog - and most importantly, have fun!
To learn more about Emily (who is launching her own professional training business soon) and her life with Ripley and Nova, follow her on instagram here.
