Dogs love to interact with their owners. A positive experience gives them a surge of love hormone known as ‘oxytocin.’ A gaze into your furry friend’s eyes can increase their hormone levels. Connecting and building a solid bond is vital for your dog to feel safe and relaxed. Teaching your dog cool tricks is pawfect for achieving this goal. 

Cool tricks to teach your dog helps to strengthen your relationship. Training is an excellent form of stimulation. It helps to lower stress and boredom, preventing unwanted behaviour and burns off any excess energy.

Here at Safer Pet, we have put together a list of eight ultimutt cool tricks to teach your dog. You will soon have your pawsome friend barking from the rooftops with a new leash of life.

1. Teach Your Dog the Army Crawl

Some dogs learn quickly. Others might need a little persuasion. Your dog will need to know how to lie down. Once they are in the down position, hold a tasty morsel before them to encourage them to lower their head. Then coax them to crawl short distances, increasing the length as your dog grasps the idea.

2. Teaching Your Dog To Sit Pretty

Training your dog with this nifty trick can be tricky for some fur babies. Sitting pretty is fantastic for strong core muscles and helps with balance and awareness. Not all dogs have the strength at the beginning of training, so it can take a couple of weeks to master.

Ask your pup to sit, then hold a treat above their nose. They should rise to follow the treat, and their front feet lift off the ground.

 

3. Train Your Dog To Stand Tall

Ask your dog to sit. Place a titbit in front of their nose and raise it to encourage them to stand. You might have to support your pup with your forearms to prevent them from losing their balance.

Repeat several times, and when your pup is following your empty hand, introduce your cue for the stand, then praise and reward.

4. How To Teach Your Dog to Moonwalk

Teaching your dog to walk backwards is fun. Dogs do not naturally walk backwards, so this is a good exercise because it uses different muscles.

The easiest way to teach your dog is by creating a corridor. You can do this by using chairs.

Stand in front of them at the start of the hallway of chairs. Take a small step towards them, and as soon as they walk backwards, praise them instantly and give them treats. As your clever pup grows more confident in the trick, widen the hallway until you have success in wide-open spaces.

5. Train Your Dog To Take a Bow

This fun trick requires patience because if you have taught your dog to lie down, they might think you are asking them to complete this task. The bow trick is where you ask your dog to bow down to the point where their chest, forearms and elbows touch the ground.

To teach your dog to bow, first show them the treat. Next, lower your hand to the floor and move it along the ground to encourage your dog into the bow position. As soon as your dog’s elbows touch the ground, bring them straight back into the standing position and praise them.

Introduce the ‘bow' command when your clever pooch has gone into the bow position a few times. Keep practising, and remember to reward when your dog is back in the standing position.

6. Teach Your Dog To Dance

Now that your pawsome pooch knows many cool tricks, you can link them together and choreograph your trick training into a dance to music. 

If you dance around your house to music, you might discover your dog excitably joining in. They are likely to feed off your enthusiasm. Together you have developed a great bonding activity.

7. Training Your Dog To Fetch Objects by Name

Teaching your dog to fetch is a classic game. However, you can take this game further and teach your dog to bring different items by name.

• Start with naming a fun toy.
• Say the object’s name as you waggle the item in front of your dog.
• When your dog reacts to the toy, praise them.
• Once your dog looks at or touches the toy, more often than not, place the toy on the floor.
• When that is successful, position the object in different places around the room.
• Each time your dog touches the item, praise them.
• Keep repeating the exercise until your dog is fetching things by name.

You can soon have your four-legged friend fetching all sorts of items, such as slippers, the remote control, the newspaper, and your safer pet dog tracker.

8. Teach Your Dog To Close the Door

This is a cool trick to teach your dog, particularly with winter approaching. Some practice at Target Training will be helpful.

A post-it note works well with teaching this trick. Once your dog touches the post-it note in your hand, stick it on the door and encourage your dog to make contact with its nose. Praise every time they feel the target, and if they push hard at the door, praise even more, especially if the door shuts.

Eventually, your dog will understand and keep closing the door. Now is the time to introduce the cue word, ‘close’ or ‘shut.’ Soon you can remove the target post-it note.

Try stepping away a little when your dog is happy, closing the door with you next to them. After a while, you can ask your dog to close the door from the comfort of your chair.

Final Paws

Teaching your canine friend cool tricks is rewarding. There are oodles of tricks you can teach your dog. Safer Pet has put together some of the coolest. Remember to:

• Find somewhere safe and quiet
• Be patient
• Praise
• Treat

If you manage to get them to do any tricks, send them into us at marketing@saferpet.com and we would love to feature them on our social media channels!

Have fun, and you will have a relaxed dog and a pawsome bond.