30-day challenge: Teach your dog five new commands (intro)

Today is July 1 and the start of my new 30-day challenge. I am taking the suggestions of others and plan on teaching my mutt five new tricks in 30 days. He knows all the basics, plus a few fun ones like speak and high-five, and more useful commands such as drop, jump and climb it.

The five commands I will teach Ace this month are bang (play dead), bucket (put his toy in a bucket), go long (run several yards out to receive a long pass), crawl and roll over.

Bang and roll over explain themselves. For crawl, I hope to get Ace to crawl across the room on his belly. Bucket and go long will be used because my mutt is such a ball nut that I might as well incorporate some tricks into playing fetch. I have not thought out how I will teach Ace some of these, as I’ve never known anyone who taught her dog to “go long.”

Anyway, I will document Ace’s progress and how I teach each trick. I won’t teach them all at once or he will get too confused. Sometimes he already goes through and performs half the stuff he knows, hoping one is right when I ask him to do something. That is a sign that he is learning too much too fast. I will teach one or two new tricks at a time and go from there.

Want to participate in this challenge? What five things will you teach your dog this month?

Click here to see my other 30-day challenges.