10 funny tricks you can easily teach your dog

It is sometimes fine to disrupt dogs’ routine by an interesting activity and what might be better than to teach your dog some tricks. Dogs hate boredom, even the greatest lazybones welcome some distraction. Here you have a couple of tips for tricks you and your furry friend can try.

Most dogs like learning, it disrupts their daily routine and gives them an opportunity to engage their brain in a more beneficial way than by inventing some monkey business. After all, none of us likes boredom. Here, you have several tricks you can teach your buddy easily:

Kiss


Maybe your pet already licks you every day. But how about to teach it a real kiss? Watch a video which will show you the training of this command step by step. You will need sticky notes, treats and a clicker. You will basically reward your dog for touching the note by its nose. Getting a treat will be connected to following the command, so you won’t need the sticky notes in a while and your dog will kiss you as you want.

Give your paw

This trick is probably one of the first commands people teach their dogs besides basic obedience. One way to teach your dog this trick is again to use treats. If you offer them in a closed fist, they will try to rake it out with their paw. At this moment, it is enough to say the command, commend your dog, give it the reward and repeat as long as needed until your dog associates this command with the action.

Bring it

Another essential trick is fetching, and the dogs naturally love it, so training it won’t be very difficult. My dog even started to practice it itself, even though I didn’t try to teach it. But there are also dogs who don’t care very much about it and you have to raise their interest in a ball at first. Other dogs might be good at fetching itself but they won’t drop the ball afterwards. The following video shows you how to do that.

Roll over

Although this trick might seem difficult at first sight, it is not like that. The basis is repeating and properly leading the dog using a treat as you can see in the video. It takes more patience. For example, my dog was able to twist his neck when practising this trick but it couldn’t turn around. It took us some time to figure it out.

Turn around

Teaching this trick is similar to “roll over” command. The basis is to lead your dog using a hand with a treat inside, only it happens on a different axle.

Bark

This trick will take quite a lot of patience and belongs to those which are more difficult. At first, you have to wait until the dog barks itself and associate this action with a reward and a command.

Play dead

This is also very popular and it is one of advanced tricks. I recommend you start with this command when the dog can already follow “roll over” command, it will be easier.

Stand tall

Another easier trick you can teach your dog quite fast using treats. You only have to put the treat above its head so it could get to it by slightly raising up. After sufficient number of repeating, it is enough to only raise your hand a little higher until your dog stands on its hind legs.

Sit still

This command won’t only look good in photos, it also helps your dog to build balance and muscles. Before practising, make sure your dog is healthy and does not have any problems with joints or with spine for example.

Hug

For the end, I picked up the cutest trick which is hugging. What could be cuter than when your buddy puts its paws around your arms or hugs its friend like this. It is a more difficult trick which will take some time to learn. Every dog has its own time to learn it and it will do better if it can already follow “sit still” command.

What tricks have you taught your buddy? For me, it was most effective to observe my dog’s behaviour and add the command to its common actions. For example, my dog used to jump high in front of me and I used that to teach it to jump into my arms.