Summary
Teaching your dog to “shake” is a fun way to bond and impress guests. Start by having your dog sit. Gently take their paw, using a verbal cue like “shake.” Reward them immediately with a treat and praise. Repeat this process, gradually increasing the duration you hold their paw. Introduce the verbal cue before taking their paw. Practice regularly, and soon your dog will offer their paw on command. For stubborn dogs, gently guide their paw initially. Ensure training sessions are short and positive. Remember, consistency and positive reinforcement are key to success in dog training.
How to Teach a Dog to Shake? – Appropriate Age to Teach Your Dog Manners
We all know that everything needs to get done in time. Just like humans were taught good manners and behaviors from childhood to be better, it also applied to dogs.
The dogs also have their proper age, when the owner can train them. Dogs between the ages of 8 and 10 weeks old can learn simple commands like sit, stay, and down.
When the dog reaches 3 to 4 months old, they can be trained with tougher controls like crawling, running, shaking, etc.
Why Teach Your Dog to Shake?
Dogs are pets that all human beings love, and if the pet behaves more sweetly by cute acts like shaking hands and crawling after seeing a person, it makes the ambiance happier.
The trainers want to teach their dogs to shake their paws, greet the guests coming home, and make them understand it’s how to express their happiness.
If you train the dog in an exact process and love and care, the dog will learn it within a few times.
How Tough is it to Teach Your Dog to Shake?
While talking about teaching your dog to shake, the process can be more accessible and more challenging. Still, it will depend on your dog’s breed, as some dogs have a high sense of humor and can catch the facts quickly, whereas some dogs have less catching power, making them slow in grasping new points.
The intelligence can differ from breed to breed, depending on how the dogs were bred. The perfect example of this can be the comparison between the border collies and the Afghan hounds; the border collies were born to listen to their owner’s commands, and that’s why they were highly biddable.
Still, the Afghan hounds will only listen to people’s commands if they were bred to work independently.
Steps to Follow While Teaching Your Dog to Shake Hands
There is a perfect way for everything; the accurate way to teach your pet how to shake paws is discussed below.
Making a Correct Position
Make your dog sit before you so he can notice what you are trying to do. Now, slowly try to take your hand ahead and let the pet recognize what’s happening.
Giving a Sign with Expressions
Your dog will lick your hand or smell after taking your hand ahead. To make it understandable, you are trying to shake hands; you can use your facial expressions as an indication toward its paws.
Repetition of the Process
After following the above, your dog will put one of its paws in your hand. You have to repeat the process a few more times unless your dog regularly puts its paws in your hand.
Build a Duration
Take gaps in the practice and put your hands before your dog after giving it a break. Let it understand that you want it to put its paws on your hand.
Treating and Praising
After your dog starts following your command and begins to put its paws on your hand, you have almost won the battle. Now praise the pet and give it a treat just after the moment he did the shake. He will understand what gives him pleasure and start doing the handshake.
Introduce a Verbal Cue
Telling it the same word you use while you want your pup to shake will make it understand what the master wants. If you wish, you can use the phrase shake or choose another one. Here, the word doesn’t matter; the fact behind the issues of the word is to make your pet understand.
Understanding When to Do
After completing all the steps mentioned above, you must make your pet understand the exact moment to shake hands. You can do this by shaking hands after giving it a treat and telling it to shake hands when guests arrive. Eventually, he will understand it is the right time to shake hands.
These steps are experimentally proven to teach your dogs how to shake hands and will work as a wonder in your dog’s training.
How to Handle the Proofing Behavior of Your Dog?
Sometimes, after trying all the above steps, some dogs will still be unable to identify what their master wants them to do. This may even happen due to the lower age of your dog or due to the lesser thinking capability of the pet compared to the others.
To deal with the proofing behavior of the dog, the owner will need to put in some more effort. The steps to be followed are-
Command with the Treat
After putting in all your efforts and still being unable to make your dog understand, you can pull your dog’s paw forcefully and try to put it in your hand so it can make it know what you want. If the pet keeps the foot in your hand, praise it and treat it.
Short Practice Session
Sometimes, the repeated process can frustrate your dog and even make it try to escape from the place. So, to prevent this, you have to keep the practice session as short and valuable as much as you can and keep the length of the session to almost 7-10 minutes.
Keeping the Mind Calm
Sometimes, the consistent failure of your dogs to learn the procedure can frustrate the owner, but the owner has to keep himself calm to maintain a frequency in the practice sessions. A consistent frequency in the practice session will make the dog learn things quickly.
A Final Test
At last, the owner should do a final test to check whether the pet has learned to shake. The owner has to tell the dog to shake with another person or ask anyone else to shake hands with it; if the dog responds quickly, the dog has learned how to shake, or it may take a little time to shake if the person is unknown to it.
If you follow these steps, your dog’s proofing behavior will change, and the understanding capability to learn new things might also increase.
Signs of Sincreaseur Dogs
While talking about shaking in dogs, rather than shaking with paws, there were many other means, like when a dog got wet, and he used to shake its body off the water from its body; the dogs often used to shake their head while they got over-excited. Sometimes, it can also signal your dog is suffering from a disease.
So, the dog owner should notice the dog’s shaking, as it can also indicate the dog’s health.
How to Teach Your Dog to Shake the Water Off?
It’s necessary to teach your dog to shake its body, as it will help it get dry quickly after taking a bath.
The steps to follow are:
- Bath your dog to make it wet, or you can just put some water on the body.
- Now, give your dog a command to shake its body. Make a different cue for body shaking, as the dog might get confused with the words.
- Don’t let it out of the bathtub until he shakes its body.
- After repeating the cue word a few times, the dog will shake its body as this is a natural action in dogs, and they don’t need much time to grasp it.
These steps will make the bathing process easier for the owners, as the water will get drained out by the body shake of your dog.
What Does Your Dog Shaking its Head Indicate?
If your pet is shaking its head once or twice, there is nothing to worry about as it’s a regular habit of dogs, but if your dog is repeatedly shaking its head, it is a sign that you should take it to a veterinarian.
Dogs usually shake their heads repeatedly whenever they suffer from a disease or get a scratch on their head that causes severe pain.
