Teaching your dog to perform household chores

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You can teach your dog to help you around the house. Your dog can wake you and other family members in the morning, close an open toilet, and dust with feather dusters. It can mop the floor and take out the trash. It can turn on the air-conditioner and the lights. Your dog can push a shopping cart or carry shopping baskets. This does not mean it knows the meaning of such tasks. Your dog will do them as you have trained it to do.

Fetch and laundry

The most common task of dogs is to fetch the daily newspaper or the weekly magazines. Dogs usually enjoy such tasks. Teach your dog by fetching the newspapers yourself at first. It will learn from you and after some-time, you do not have to go out of your house anymore. You can also teach your dog to sort laundry. Canines love to handle soft objects and your clothes and shoes are comfortable for it to hold. Since dogs are color-blind, it cannot sort clothes on the basis of color. To bypass this, place sets of clothes in different places spaced apart. Then order the dog to take one piece from a set and put it beside the washing machine. Do this serially and from every pile. After you do this for a few times, it will get the hang of it and then can differentiate the clothes by itself. Needless to say, reward her for every successful task with a treat.

Closing doors and picking trash

You can teach your dog to close doors. It can not only close the main door but also the pantry door and the refrigerator door. Instruct it to close doors with a towel, so as not to leave any mark. Teaching this task to your dog is easy. Teach her to target using her paw or nose. Try to teach the latter as it leaves no mark on the furniture. Start by offering your hand palm to your dog. When it sniffs the palm, say "yes" and give it treat. Repeat this procedure until it bumps your hand with its nose. After some time, take a lid in your hand and encourage your dog to push this lid. Transfer the lid to the door you want your dog to close. After some time, take away the lid. Ensure that your dog touches the lid or the door to be closed with a force so as to close it.Your dog can also pick up trash. This is a natural progression if your dog already has the habit to pick up its own toys and place them in an open container. To train your dog in picking up and dropping trash, offer a non-edible trash piece to your dog to pick it up. Once it picks up the piece of garbage, take the dog to the garbage can and order it to drop the trash into the trash can. Reward her successful action. Make sure that your dog understands that the trash must be placed inside the can. You can teach your dog to use the push-pedal trash can.

Teach Your Dog to Fetch!

National Train Your Dog Month may be coming to a close, but it's never too late to teach your dog a fun new command!Have you ever wished you and your dog could have that quintessential moment together -- playing a perfect game of fetch? It may sound easy, but anyone who's tried to enact this classic scene of dog ownership with an overly excited or easily distracted dog knows that it's a little harder than it looks.Well, dog parents, you've come to the right place.The professional dog trainers at ECAD have perfected the art of teaching a dog to fetch -- without the game devolving into you throwing things your dog happily ignores -- and they'd shared it with us and with you!Learn how to use the commands "Get It" and "Give"to hold the perfect game of fetch!