Translated by Nick R
Your pet’s well-being doesn’t depend only on the food you give him/her or if you take him/her for a walk every day, dogs are emotional and it’s up to you whether they behave well and understand your commands.
Teaching them some basic tricks won’t only improve your dog’s skills, but it will also strengthen your relationship. So I will explain 15 super easy tricks to teach your dog without leaving home.
Table of Contents
Why train your dog?
Teaching some tricks to your canines can benefit their mental health, this type of training challenges them mentally and enhances your bond with them.
Moreover, our furry friends will be happier and more attentive to following commands, helping greatly to avoid different behavioral problems, such as aggressiveness, hyperactivity, and even anxiety.
What do you need for training your dog?
Some things you should keep in mind when starting to train your furry one are:
Patience
Dogs can sense your frustration and stress and will get distracted by these negative feelings, so they won’t enjoy the training sessions.
Recommendation: You must understand that all dogs are different and learn slower or faster. Don’t despair and carry out the training with a positive attitude.
Training should be fun:
Training should be full of motivation and positive energy. Remember the best way to educate our furry ones is by playing; both you and the dog have fun while your dog enjoys learning.
Short training sessions
Just as it happens to us, our furry friends get bored and distracted after doing a certain activity for a long time.
Recommendation: keep training sessions short and let your dog rest between each session. They can take between 5 to 10 minutes; it depends on your dog’s attention spawn. Remember! What matters is that you both have fun.
Positive reinforcement
Aside from a good attitude, consider that to succeed in teaching your dog, you must also give him some reward.
Letting your furry one know that if it performs a certain trick you will reward it will further motivate it; this is what is known as “positive reinforcement”.
It is simply a stimulus given to your dog whenever it behaves in a certain way, so it becomes more likely that it will repeat the behavior.
In fact, behavioral psychology also does this with us, either in education, at work to increase productivity, or even in psychological therapies, making it very effective.
You can start by offering treats, cookies, or any kind of dog snacks and after it has understood the trick, you can change these treats for caresses and compliments that will make it very happy.
If your dog has any special condition, such as for overweight or diabetes, you can use a toy as a reward or consult your veterinarian for a snack appropriate for them.
Differences in training a puppy and an adult dog
There is a myth that says that, if you didn’t train your pet as a puppy, it will be more difficult for it to learn new things as an adult, but it’s not entirely true.
Dogs can learn at any age, the difficult part when they are adults is to eliminate inappropriate behaviors that have been reinforced for years.
Puppies, on the other hand, are just beginning to understand their environment so they are more likely to follow commands.
However, the advantage of working with adult dogs is that they concentrate more on what you say, puppies get distracted more easily as they are in their “immature stage”, so they can easily get interested in something else around them.
Start with basic tricks
If your dog doesn’t know any tricks yet, it’s best to start with the basics and gradually move up in difficulty.
Amber, my pet, learned the basic tricks like sitting, staying still and kissing in about two weeks, by having at least three short sessions a day.
All furry dogs are different, identify how your dog learns the fastest and when it pays more attention in order to train it successfully. Here are some easy tricks you can teach your dog and how to do it:
1. Sitting trick
Have a treat in your hand (a treat or any snack), place yourself in front of your dog, and raise your hand to let it see what you have there; your dog will pay full attention to you. As soon as it sits and keeps looking at you, give the command “sit“, congratulate it, and give it the treat.
You can give your dog a little help if he doesn’t sit; using the treat, bring your hand behind his head, and by inertia, your dog will sit. This actually worked very well for me when teaching my puppy Amber.
Do this every day until your dog understands the command without having any treats at hand.
2. Giving the paw trick
Once your dog has learned to sit you can continue with this trick. When your dog is sitting, kneel down next to him, lift his paw and say “give me your paw” or “say hello”. Repeat this until the dog understands and reward him with a treat.
You can also hold the treat inside your fist, this will further motivate your furry to touch your hand with its paw.
3. High Five
If your dog already knows how to paw, this trick will be easier. For this trick, you’ll stand up and put your hand at high five position; show your hand to your dog as you did in the previous trick. Just put the palm of your hand up and in front of your dog; when it touches the hand you’ll reward it.
After several repetitions, start giving the command “click it” with your hand higher and higher until it jumps up or gets up on its paws to touch your hand. Remember to always congratulate and give the dog its reward when it does well.
4. Stay still
If your dog has already learned the “sit” command, this one will be easier.
Tell your dog to sit and then walk away a few steps saying “stay” and showing your palm.
Repeat it until your dog stops following you and stays in its place, give it a treat, and break the command by saying the word “come” to let it know that it can approach you again.
Another way you can teach this trick is as follows:
You are going to open your front door, your dog will want to pounce to get out, and you will block its way out with your body. As it backs away, you open the door a little more, and your dog will try to get out again, so you will block the way again.
You do it until your dog stays still a few steps away from the door, once this happens you will say the command “stay” wait a few seconds and reward him and give the command to release him.
The command can be “come on” or “come” and you will let him pass the door.
5. Lying down
Take a treat in your hand and bring it close to your dog’s nose, lower the treat little by little and press his back a little until it lies down, when it does, you give the command “down” and release the treat.
Repeat until your furry understands it, and give the release command “come on” or “come” so that your dog gets up only with your permission.
6. Give a kiss
This is a pretty basic trick, and there are two ways you can get your furry to learn it.
You can bring your cheek close to your dog and say “give me a kiss” or just “kiss” every time he licks you; when it does it, congratulate it and provide some treat.
Another method is to put the treat on your cheek, and when your dog touches your cheek with its snout, give it the treat immediately. This also prevents it from licking your face and only brings its snout closer as if it were giving you a little kiss.
After repeating this several times you can introduce the command “kiss” or “kissy” as you prefer.
Remember it’s all about practice!
7. Jumping through a hoop
You will hold a treat in your hand and show it to your dog, when it follows, you reward him. Here the idea is to hold the hoop with one hand and the treat with the other, your dog will have to jump through the hoop to get a reward.
If it tries to approach you by going around, don’t congratulate it and put the ring back in front of it until it goes through. Start by putting the hoop close to the floor and little by little move it up, every time it gets it right give the command “jump” and congratulate it.
If you don’t have a treat you can try this trick with your dog’s favorite toy.
Repeat the trick until your dog jumps through the hoop with no problem at all.
8. Get the ball
This trick can be a great help to exercise your dog and have fun. For this trick, you must do this:
Attach a long rope to your dog, throw the ball and when it has the ball, call “bring “ and start pulling the leash little by little to guide him to you.
Show a treat to your dog to make it let go, and repeat this as many times as necessary until your dog understands it without using the leash or a treat.
9. Make circles
You must have a treat in your hand, and make your dog follow it. start by walking around with your hand close to your dog’s nose, and release the treat or it will get tired of following you.
After doing this for a while you have to stand in one place and move your hand around your dog; it will turn around to follow its treat, congratulate it and give it its reward.
Finally, you can introduce the command “turn” or ” spin” and gradually remove the treat so that it sees the trick as a game. You can also reduce the movement of your hand so your furry dog only follows the command.
10. Roll
First, you must give the ” down” or “lie down” command that I taught you.
When it is already lying on the floor, you are going to take the treat and try to guide it so that your dog lies down sideways; you reward it when it does this and again, guide the treat so your dog starts to roll to the other side.
To do this, put the treat on its snout corner towards the side you want it to roll. You will have to help it a little bit with your hands so it understands.
Once it begins to do it more naturally, introduce the command “roll”.
11. Playing dead
First, you need to make it lie down and stay still, and then you do the same thing as in the previous trick.
Put the treat close to its snout and make it spin until it gets upside down. Add the command “dead” as it does the trick.
Many people say “bang” like the sound of a gun and use a visual prompt to form a gun with your hand.
Your dog will associate the hand movement with the command so you won’t need to say it every time.
After several repetitions, we will focus on making it last longer in that position. For this, take a little longer to feed it its treat, so it stays still waiting for the usual treat.
Keep your hand in front of it for two seconds and give it the snack, you can increase the waiting time each time.
12. Not pulling on the leash
The command “together” will be to teach your dog to walk by your side without pulling on the leash.
Call him to sit next to you, and then you take a step; put the treat at your leg level and give it to the dog as he gets next to you, always saying “together”.
Repeat until you have walked a fair distance with him next to you.
So it doesn’t distract, show him the treat and then you close your fist and start walking while saying “together” several times (congratulate your dog before it loses interest).
Note: Often dogs pull on the leash because they have a lot of energy, so you should take them out two or three times a day to help them calm down. How long the walk should depend on how active your pet is.
For small breeds, a 20 to 30-minute walk is enough; for medium breeds, 30 minutes to an hour, and for large breeds (which tend to be more energetic), an hour or more is ideal.
13. Taking a bow
This trick is pretty much like the lying down one; put the treat in front of your dog and lower your hand to make it follow you.
So that it doesn’t lie down, cross your arm under your furry boy’s backside; once the dog bows without having to put your arm under it, you can introduce the command “bow”.
Remember to congratulate and reward it every time it gets it right.
Here is a video of a trainer explaining this trick, if your dog knows the “lie down” command it might get a little confused at the beginning.
14. No biting
This trick is really worth learning. If we don’t teach our dog from puppyhood to control his biting, he could hurt us unintentionally as he grows up.
If your puppy’s permanent teeth are coming in, it’s completely natural that it feels like biting since it will have an annoying sensation in the gums.
The idea is not that the dog stops biting, but that it doesn’t damage our shoes or furniture, nor that it bites us.
The solution: provide various toys that the dog can chew on and make him curious; there’s no need to scold him if it’s chewing on something we don’t want, like our shoes, just change the shoe for his toy and play with your furry friend for a while.
Lastly, as I said, your furry should understand his biting force. So, play with it and when he bites you too hard, say “No” and stop the game. Your furry will understand that the game is over if he bites too hard.
Some people also fake a whine so the dog realizes it hurts them.
15. Teach it to speak
This trick consists of having your dog bark when you give the command. Of course, the furry one won’t be able to talk the way we do.
To achieve this, you must take something your dog really likes, for example, its favorite toy.
Play with it for a while and once it gets excited with the game, take the toy and put it behind your back or stretch your arm up where your dog can’t reach it.
Show it to the dog several times, but don’t hand it over until it barks, and when it does, give it the toy and congratulate it.
Later you can introduce the command “speak” every time your dog barks.
With patience and dedication, you and your furry friend will be able to do it.
Recommendation
Start with the easiest tricks and remember to always congratulate your dog when it does things right, the training process should be fun for both of you.Amber, my puppy, already knows some basic tricks and we have fun in the process. And you, are you up for it?
