teaching left paw and right paw?

I taught them to Max seperately. Actually, I captured it and put it on command so that I could get him to stop doing it all the time. I only rewarded for one side though. Once he knew I was rewarding only that one, he stopped offering the other. I couldn't teach the other one for a while because he wouldn't offer it anymore. It was a few months before all of a sudden one day he offered the other paw, and then I only rewarded that one. Now he knows that if I hold my hand like a high 5, I want his left, and if I put my hand out flat palm up, I want the right. Soo... i'm not sure whether you should teach them seperately or not. It will probably eliminate the confusion, but she might stop offering the one you aren't teaching. 

well, she's more prone to use her left foot  (probably because i'm right handed and that's the foot closest to my hand when I say "gimme 5"), so I'll start out teaching her "right paw", and then later after she's got that down I'll bring in "left paw" and see how it works then.
 
I just felt like I was confusing her by doing it at once.  I really thought she had it, and then after a few times it seemed like she was just giving me any paw.  I think I get overzealous.  [X(]

I never teach left or right paw, but I do teach going left and right for obstacles and retrieves etc. I always first do many reps with one direction, from all around the dog, at different distances and so forth. This goes on for a few days, until the dog runs left whenever I say left, no matter where I stand or he sits. Then I do the other direction the same way. Then I switch the directions in blocks, so that within 2 minutes or so I do many reps to the left, then we do 2 minutes to the right, then to the left again, slowly - over the course of several days - working myself down to randomly sending them left or right (the speed with which this proceeds depends a lot on the dog; some get it real quick, with others it can be quite a battle). From what I have seen, you also can teach them left and right while mixing it from the start, but it seems to be much more difficult for them and thus takes considerably longer. I would assume that the same basics hold for teaching lifting the left or the right paw on cue, or any other left/right distinction.

Good luck []

Thanks for the advice!