How to Pet-Proof Your Home
Some precautions are necessary to help keep pets safe around the home.
Teaching your dog new tricks can be a great way to spend time together, play games, mentally stimulate your pup, and strengthen your overall relationship. Dog training also gives your dog a chance to exercise both their body and brain, while helping to reinforce important commands, good behavior, and critical obedience skills, like impulse control.
Remember it can take time and effort for your dog to learn new commands. Keep the learning process fun to keep your dog engaged and take breaks any time you or your dog gets frustrated with training.
Hand targeting consists of training your dog to touch his or her nose to your hand on command. It’s like having a dog magnet in your hand that you can use to lead your dog around and train new behaviors. One of the most basic dog commands, target touch training can create a solid base for teaching your dog to perform more complicated tricks using your hand as a guide.
Hand targeting is a form of dog obedience training and can come in handy when you need to move your dog. For instance, you can use it to command your dog off the couch or away from something that might be harmful without scolding.
Hand target training can also be useful to encourage shy dogs to explore something or someone that makes them nervous. You can teach your dog to target your hand near the “scary” object or person. Just be sure to be patient and stop if your dog seems too stressed or upset.
As your dog masters this new trick, you can also add a command word, such as “Touch.”
With this fun trick, you get your dog running, but then add a twist by commanding your pooch to stop and lie down.
Ready-Set-Down can help your dog improve on listening and impulse control skills. Your dog will naturally want to keep running, but will have to shift gears and lie down at your command. This cool trick also gives you and your dog some healthy exercise.
You probably played hide and seek as a kid—now you can teach it to your dog! Hide and seek can be taught using a toy, a treat or yourself as the hidden object.
This fun trick gets your dog thinking and moving around. It’s one of the best interactive games to play with your dog and can be applied in a variety of ways. If you need time to yourself, for instance, try hiding dog treats around the house and command your dog to search for them while you work. The hide and seek trick can provide you with much precious free time while keeping your dog stimulated and entertained.
The key here is to use repetitive, minute gestures until the dog realizes which exact behavior deserves the reward.
With this trick, you teach your dog the standard “army crawl” where he or she crouches down and moves along the ground towards you. Although seemingly an easy dog trick, some dogs may start to get up each time the treat or your hand reach what they perceive as walking distance. The key here is to use repetitive, minute gestures until the dog realizes which exact behavior deserves the reward.
If you've already taught the hand targeting command or "touch," you can use your fingers in place of a dog treat. Whether you use a dog treat or the hand targeting trick to lure your dog forward, be sure to progress slowly by only slightly increasing the distance of the target from the dog's face.
Army Crawl can be a good exercise for your dog. It also helps build your dog’s ability to listen and perform a more advanced behavior than sit or lie down.
Take a Bow is simply that—you teach your dog to bow with chest to the ground and bottom in the air. Some dogs do this on their own when they’re playing or getting in a good stretch.
While all dog tricks can help build your relationship and communication skills, tricks like Take a Bow are mostly just for fun. It’s the perfect ending for a series of tricks!
If your dog keeps going all the way down to the floor rather than bowing, you can try placing your arm gently underneath his or her stomach when you practice.
You can also use a dog clicker to help teach these fun new dog tricks to your pooch. Learn about Clicker Training for Puppies, which works for dogs of any age!
While these are all good behaviors to teach your dog, sometimes they develop bad ones.
Reminder: Treats should not make up more than 10% of a pet’s caloric intake. Also, stomach upset may occur in pets who do not tolerate dietary changes well.