Sometimes, people get the mistaken idea that teaching your dog tricks is not "serious" training. For some reason, they think that "heel" is serious, but "put your toy away" really isn't. However, I like to think of training a trick the same way I think of training any other behavior. There's an antecedent, behavior and consequence, and the process of operant conditioning is the same whether you teach the dog to sneeze on cue or to sit and stay. Skill as a trainer is very much enhanced by practicing the process, so how can practice be bad, even if you are training tricks? Another upside to having your dog know some cute tricks is that you may someday want to use them to make other people feel good, such as in therapy dog work. A few cute tricks can also make a large, scary looking dog more palatable to the general public. I wish more Pit Bull owners would teach their dogs a little trick routine! I do have a colleague who taught her Rottweiler to "wave goodbye" as people would walk to the other side of the street to avoid the "big scary dog." I imagine that Rottie didn't look half as scary while she was doing that on command. If you think of it, one of the biggest fears people have is that you aren't in control of your big scary dog. To them, tricks can mean that you have trained *above* the normal level of obedience, not below, and that you are, indeed, in charge of what your dog does. Better than being faced with a large dog pulling toward them on its leash, or even heeling (which can look intimidating, believe it or not, as if you might suddenly be able to sic the dog on them). A trick is so much more fun, thus less intimidating. Of course, if you are one of those macho types who actually got your dog because you wanted to stroke your own ego about the ability to handle a Cujo type, then you wouldn't want a dog that does anything cute, I suppose...
One of the easiest ways to teach your dog to do fun things for public consumption is to "capture" behaviors that he does naturally. This is a little video of my friend Pam Johnson training her pup to scratch on cue. What makes it fun is the eventual addition of a funny cue, "Isabelle, do you have fleas?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dmEbezlpGo&feature=autofb
Once you learn to "capture" behavior, you can use it to capture anything the dog does that you would like to put on cue - what a useful skill that is!!! Even with beginners, I've used it to help greyhound owners capture "down" so that they don't need to manhandle a dog that rarely lies down, except on the couch;-) Once the dog understands the cue, it's much easier to transfer the skill so that he will "down" on a mat or a floor instead of just on the couch, and be able to have him do it when asked.