– Hey everybody, if you've been
watching my YouTube channel or following me elsewhere in social media, you'll see that the most
important person in my life, is actually not a person
at all, but my pup Roxy. (upbeat music) (Roxy howling) She's a big part of my
life and my dad's life. We actually got Roxy when I lost my mom during my medical school training. If you're interested in seeing that whole story of how we got Roxy, check out my Mother's Day tribute video. It's a great story. In this video I'm going to show
you guys how I trained Roxy and how you can use those same tips at home to train your own dog. Make sure you stick around
to the end of this video because I'm going to be discussing a bunch of health benefits
you can get from owning a dog. Before we get into specifics, its important that you establish yourself as the alpha in the relationship. – I got big boy pants on! – Some people view as
being strict with your dog or being unkind to your dog, but that's totally not the case.
It's important to
establish the relationship that you're in control,
that you are the leader. Simple examples of being an alpha is entering a space first before your dog, making sure you eat before your dog eats, and again that sounds
harsh but it really isn't, because your dog needs to
know that you're the leader and you're the one that's
in control of the situation. Being the leader in a relationship not only allows your dog to be safe but also reduces your dog's anxiety. When your dog knows
what to expect from you when you give a command, it
helps a dog feel more at ease and it facilitates a better
line of communication.
All right let's get into commands. I think these basic commands
are the most important to teach your dog right off the bat. Sit is one of the most important commands and the first command
that you can probably teach to your dog and
it's a great foundation for all the other tricks that your gonna be teaching your dog. How to teach your dog sit? Well this one's really simple. You want to get a treat, something your dog absolutely adores and really just take the treat and slowly raise it above the dog's head and when your making that motion the dog will naturally
want to lower it's behind. If your dog naturally doesn't
lower it's behind to the floor it's totally appropriate to
raise the treat with one hand and also push on your dog's
bottom with the other.
Lay, when you want your dog to lay down you have them in a seated position and then you take the treat
right in front of their face and lower it slowly to ground-level, having your dog's face follow the treat. As you get closer to the floor the dog will naturally want to lie down. Once the dog is lying down it's important to say the command again,
lay and congratulate the dog by either giving the treat
or just giving praise. Heel, it's an incredibly important command because you never know what goes on in the dog park or the city. Heel is the perfect command in order to recall your dog into position. You call your dog and your dog goes into the exact position every single time, whether your mobile or stationary. I prefer having my dog heel to left side so that my dominant hand is
free to be without the leash and able to do commands
like go on Instagram and check my YouTube channel. To teach the heel
command, you want to start with your dog seated
directly in front of you.
Bring the treat to the dog's eye level and slowly start bringing
the treat around you while saying the word heel. Once a dog is in a seated
position on your chosen side, repeat the command heel and give the dog a treat
with a ton of praise. Stay. ?Stay with me ? There's plenty of situations where my dog will be on one side of the street and there will be another dog on the other side of the street. It's important that I am
able to tell Roxy to stay so she doesn't run into traffic. To teach the stay command, I'll start by walking with Roxy and interrupt her path
by putting my hand firmly in front of her and taking steps back.
If Roxy continues to follow,
I'll repeat the command stay and continue walking backwards and only congratulate her when
she follows the command stay. Leave it, when Roxy and
I are roaming the streets of New York there's plenty of delicious but dangerous goodies all over the floor. You're the one in control and you're the one that
can protect the dog by saying, leave it. To teach the leave it command, you want to throw something on the ground that your dog finds delicious and instantly tap the dog on the neck to recapture the dogs
attention as a correction while giving the command, leave it.
The reason you give the tap
specifically on the neck is because when dogs are puppies their mom's give them corrections by nipping them right at the neck. We talked about the basic safety commands but not let's do a few commands that are just plain adorable. Give Paw, it's an adorable
command that everybody loves, when they greet a dog, it
almost makes them human like it brings that affection out. The way you teach the give paw command is to have your dog seated
directly in front of you, to have a treat in one hand
and with your free hand to literally take a dog's paw and place it into position
while saying the command paw.
Immediately give your dog a
treat and give a lot of praise. And ultimately your dog will just start giving you it's paw when you say the word paw. And then if you really want to get fancy, you can transition from
give paw to high-five like Roxy does so well because
it makes for adorable photos. Play dead, there is no utility for this but again incredibly adorable. Roxy's a very energetic dog and it's really funny
to watch her play dead and lie completely still on the floor for an extended period of time. To teach the play dead command you really just have to position your dog and keep repeating the word play dead and giving her a treat afterwards.
The more you do this, the more your dog will associate laying in that position with lying dead. Hug is a really easy
commands to teach your dog because most dogs will naturally
want to jump on you anyway. So just get into a kneel position, have your dog seated in front of you, give the command hug while
tapping your shoulders, get your dog excited and your dog will naturally jump on you. Speak, this is a tricky command to teach because you have to do
it right when it happens. Sometimes your dogs are going to be vocal and that's when you say speak and you associate the command with what your dog is already
doing with that command. If your dog starts barking
when you're not asking for the command speak, you
don't want to give any praise and in fact you want to ignore the dog so your dog learns not to do it when you're not asking for the command. Here is an advanced bonus trick, search, I see this command carried out by police dogs and counter terrorism dogs. So I wondered if I could teach Roxy how to search and yes I could.
To teach a search command
requires a number of steps. Step one, you want to get
a treat into your hand and allow your dog to
smell the treat first and then give the dog the treat. Step two, is to take the
treat, have the dog sit but watch you hide the
treat somewhere in the room. Then go back to your dog, allow
your dog to smell your hand and then say search and your dog will take that as a command
to go get the treat. Next, you want to bring
the dog into another room, have the dog sit in that room and wait while you go and hide the treat somewhere near by the
original hiding place before. Now you call the dog back into the room, allow your dog to smell
your hand and say search. And your dog will initially go to the spot where the treat was last hidden but when it's not there
the dog will start to sniff and ultimately find the treat
in the new hiding place.
You can keep expanding the range
of where you hide the treat until ultimately you can
take your dog outside which becomes very impressive. So now you have a well-trained dog. Congratulations. Owning a dog comes with
a ton of health benefits that you may not know about. Dogs encourage you to exercise. Dogs need walks, just as
much as humans need walks. So if you have a furry friend
there that's encouraging you to exercise and go for a walk or a run, that makes a process a lot more exciting, a lot more interesting. Believe it or not, having a dog actually decreases your risk
of dying from heart disease. A study followed a group of people that had their first heart attack and those who were dog owners had significantly lower risk of dying just because they were dog owners. Dogs decrease anxiety and decrease the risk of
developing a mood disorder.
When it comes to kids, having
a dog in the house decreases the risk of a child developing
asthma and allergies and also improves the
childrens socialization. Now think about all the benefits dogs give to those who are disabled. Those who are blind, deaf, or elderly, they get a huge benefit in quality of life from owning a dog because they
get a major support group. But this is just the
tip of the iceberg guys. We're still discovering all the benefits that dogs bring into our lives. I hope this video proved to you why dogs are truly man's best friend and why Roxy is my best friend. (static) She loves when I scratch her ear and then let her lick it
off my finger, her ear wax. (static) Watch me, speak. (growls) Growl. (growls) (static) (barks) (static) Hey guys, thanks for watching. If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button now
to get new videos every week.
