“Man’s best friend”, this is the most common phrase one hears when dogs are a topic of discussion. This is because the statement is the best way to describe how amazing dogs are and how they provide an excellent company. One can feel all the loneliness in their life being eliminated whenever dogs are near them. This is exactly the reason dogs are used to help with therapy and provide therapeutic services.
Having a pet dog is a wonderful feeling, and a pet owner would agree that nothing brings more joy than spending time with their pet and bonding with them. There are many ways one can bond with their dogs; teaching tricks are one of them.
Teaching tricks to your dog allow not only you to make a better bond with your dog but also your friends, relatives and kids to come and play with your dog, make a connection with him easily and hence give more love to your dog. Dog tricks can be both fun and useful. Teaching tricks will make your dog smarter. So, it is always recommended to teach your dogs some cool & useful tricks. For complex dog tricks, you might require some trainer but here are Top 10 easy dog tricks which you can teach your dog at home:
1. Hug: One of the simpler tricks involves your dog putting its arms around you and sharing a warm beautiful hug with you. Everyone knows that a hug can be one of the best things to calm your mind down, but it gets more enhanced if a dog does it. The sheer warmth and unconditional love of dogs make hugs a hundred times better than normal ones. A dog will be able to hug you better if it knows the ‘sit’ trick, but it can be also done without that.
2. Sit: This can be taught to dog in many variations, one of them being “sit pretty”. Teaching a dog to sit pretty can not only improve its obedience but also turn out to be fun because it can be used to test the dog’s patience. Obediently sitting, or sitting pretty can also help to take a lot of adorable pictures of the dog. Teaching your dog different postures can also help to make the balance and limb strength of the dog better and stronger.
3. Kiss: This is by far the easiest trick to teach a dog since it already gives its fair bit of kisses daily. A simple method like keeping a little treat on the surface of your cheek can attract the dog to give you the kiss. One may even choose to teach their dogs to kiss on the basis of sounds like a click or whistle.
4. Shake hands: Another super popular trick that can be taught to your dog very easily. It is a very adorable trick that involves a fun handshake with the dog. One can achieve this easily by enclosing a treat or an eatable item within their hands since the dog will always extend a paw in such conditions. After doing this a couple of times and adding a keyword like “shake”, a dog starts to understand that you want it to extend its paw when you say the keyword and that’s all you need to teach the trick.
5. Bark: This trick is on the little difficult and time-consuming side mainly because it involves extending the dog’s attention span and concentration levels. Trying to teach this trick also requires a lot of patience since you have to wait for every time they bark and then provide them with a small treat for each time they bark. This trick requires a lot of practice, even professional trainers can teach these tricks properly to dogs. This is mainly because the trick requires a lot of free time with the dog and cannot be taught within a week or two.
6. Rollover: This is a simple but rigorous trick which requires a lot of practice. One can master the trick completely solely with the help of constantly repeating it. The trick consists of a few steps, which has to be taught to the dog one by one so that it can do a complete roll. Again, treats are the best way to teach such tricks to the dogs and help them master it.
7. Play dead: Once your dog learns ‘Roll Over’, teaching it ‘play dead’ is extremely easy, The trick can blow minds away since it looks so cool if you finger gun your dog and say BANG! it acts to fall down and pretend dead. The trick requires a bit of perseverance and can be taught to a dog in a reversed manner, starting from the last step of the trick first.
8. Spin: Another classic trick, this can be taught to your dog without much difficulty. One simply has to hold a treat in front of the dog’s nose or tail. This will compel the dog to make a full circle to try and eat the treat. Using a keyword every time it spins can be a very good way of teaching it to do a spin every time it hears the keyword. With more practice, you can also teach your dog to go both left and right according to the order.
9. Stand: This is a brief little trick which amazes most people because it involves the dog standing and balancing itself on its hind legs for a few seconds. One needs to make sure to teach this trick to a dog only if it has strong hind legs and the conditions of the space around the dog is safe. The trick becomes pretty simple after you are able to make the dog understand that it has to balance itself on the hind legs.
10. Fetch: Being one of the most well-known tricks, it can be a very natural trick for a dog to perform, but some dogs don’t have it naturally within them. This can be fixed, by simply making the dog interested in the game first. After that is done, the dog will itself want to bring the item back to you. Fetch is easily one of the most enjoyable games to play with your dogs and one can play it endlessly without getting tired.
Finding the right trick to teach your dog can be difficult, hopefully, these 10 shortlisted dog tricks help you to make better decisions about which trick you want to teach your dog and have a great bonding session with it. If you need help to train your dog, you can consider a dog shock collar to help you speed up the process.