Be sure to raise the criteria slowly enough so that the dog is sure to succeed. Raising the criteria should be in relation to the level the dog already offers you independently from time to time. This means that if for example the dog heels sloppily but every now and then correctly at the correct spot on your left side close to your leg, the next thing to teach is to only reinforce the best behaviors. The dog will understand that even when the rules become a little harder, it is still possible and quite easy for him to earn the click and treat, with just a little more effort.

When you are teaching something to the dog, reinforce only one criterion of the behavior at a time. For example when teaching the correct show posture, if you first do not click when the head is not right and next time do not click because the feet are not right, the dog cannot understand what he did wrong. One criterion at a time!

Before you raise or increase the requirement level, maintain the already-learned level by random reinforcement. When the dog has learnt the behavior (the behavior is under a cue) you should start reinforcing it only occasionally. This is an important principle of the shaping process. Then you can choose only the best performances of the behavior to be reinforced, which again will drive the performance towards perfection.

When you add a new criterion to the behavior lower the requirement level of the already-learned criteria. If for example the dog does not perform equally well when you start training in an environment with more distractions, return to the lower level so that the dog can be successful again. Or when teaching show stacking - when the dog already knows the correct head position and you want to add the feet, do not feel bad if the dog at first forgets the head when he is busy concentrating on the correct feet positioning in order to get the click and treat. This is only temporary - what he has learned he will remember, but under the stress of increasing requirements an old learned thing can be forgotten for a while. When he learns the new criterion, the other parts of the behavior will return to the learned level also.

Make yourself a plan on what to reinforce next. This is in case the dog progresses faster than you had expected. Sometimes the dog makes a sudden breakthrough in the learning process and rapidly progresses to the right direction. In these cases it is very important to be able to raise the criteria immediately. If the criteria remain the same the dog might get bored and there is a possibility that he will not co-operate that well in future.

Do not change the trainer during learning of a behavior. The dog may have many trainers but only one for each behavior. Different people have different habits, requirements and expectations for progress, which may cause the behavior to deteriorate or even disappear until the dog and the trainer have reached the same wavelength.

If you cannot establish progress with one form of shaping, try another one. For any behavior there are as many ways to shape it, as there are trainers to invent them.

Do not end a training session without a reward. When training, the trainee and the trainer "make a deal" and if the trainer breaks the deal by ignoring the dog, for example by starting to talk with a by-passer or just daydreaming, the dog takes this as a punishment: he does not get a reward even when he did the behavior and cannot understand why.

If a learned behavior declines, revise the shaping process. This is done right from the beginning, step-by-step but in a faster mode with a couple of reinforcements by each level to refresh the memory.

Finish the training session when the animal has made a breakthrough. The dog will remember the last thing learned. It is a general mistake to not have patience to finish the session when the dog does the behavior really well (breakthrough) but to insist him doing it again and again. This will make the animal bored and the behavior deteriorates. But if you are patient enough and stop training and try this behavior the next day again, the performance is not just equally good but often even better. Training should always be finished on a high note.