How to Teach a Dog to Shake?

Every pet parent wants to make their dog learn the best way to treat other people, so they used to train their dog as much as possible to make the pet better compared to the other ones.

Shaking hands is one of the good manners that your dog should learn to provide a sweet gesture to the guests coming to your home. Now, how to teach a dog to shake? Start with a proper position, indicate signs with expressions, and keep repeating the process.

Everything that will help you teach your dog how to shake will be discussed in this article. So go through the entire article to gain the information.

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 human beings were taught good manners and behaviors from childhood to be better, it was also applicable in the case of dogs.

The dogs also have their proper age from which the owner can start training them. The dogs between the ages of 8 to ten weeks old can get the teaching of simple commands like sit, stay, down, etc.

Whereas when the dog reaches 3 to 4 months old, they can be trained with a bit tougher controls like crawl, run, shake, etc.

Why Teach Your Dog to Shake?

Dogs are pets that all human beings love, and if the pet behaves more sweetly by some 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 paws to make them learn how to greet the guests coming home and also to make them understand it’s the way 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, and it usually depends 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 not listen to anyone’s commands as 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 in front of you so that he can notice what you are trying to do. Now slowly try to take ahead your one hand and let the pet recognize what’s going on.

Giving a Sign with Expressions

Your dog will lick your hand or smell after taking your hand ahead. To make it understand 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 starts putting its paws regularly in your hand.

Build a Duration

Start taking gaps in the practice and put your hands in front of 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 it 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 as per your choice. Here the word doesn’t matter; the fact behind the word matters to make your pet understand.

Understanding When to Do

After completing all the steps mentioned above, you have to make your pet understand the exact moment to shake hands with. 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 the best in teaching 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 not be able to identify what their master wants them to do. This may even happen due to the lower age of your dog or due to a 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 all your efforts and still not being able to make your dog understand, the thing you can do is 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, then praise it and give it a treat.

Short Practice Session

Sometimes, the repeated process can make your dog frustrated and even 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, keep the length of the session to almost 7-10 minutes.

Keeping the Mind Calm

Sometimes the consistent failure of your dogs in learning the procedure can frustrate the owner, but the owner has to keep itself 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 if the pet has learned to shake or not. 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 pet has learned how to shake, or it may take a little time to shake if the person was unknown to it.

If you follow these steps, then the proofing behavior of your dog will get changed, and the understanding capability of your dog to learn new things might also get increased.

Signs of Shaking for Your 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. Whereas sometimes, it can also be a sign of your dog suffering from any disease.

So the dog owner should notice the dog’s shaking as it can also indicate their 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:

1. Give a bath to your dog to make it wet, or you can just put some water on the body.
2. Now give a command to your dog to shake the body. Make a different cue for body shaking as the dog might get confused with the words.
3. Don’t let it out of the bathtub until he shakes its body.
4.  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 this fact.

These steps will make the bathing process of the owners easier, 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 and twice, there is nothing to worry about as it’s a regular habit of dogs, but if your dog is repeatedly shaking its head, then it is a sign that you should take your dog to a veterinarian.

Dogs usually shake their heads repeatedly whenever they are suffering from a disease or get a scratch on their head that is causing severe pain to them.