How to Train Your Dog to Wake You Up

Are you one of those people that just can’t get up in the morning and everything is just a complete struggle? Do you find you’re always running behind and rushing around and are often late to work or for other commitments? Have you tried multiple different types of alarm, such as those that are supposed to wake you up when you’re in a lighter sleep and still nothing works?

Well, fear not because not all hope is lost. What if you had a living alarm, one that wouldn’t quit when you rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, one that you couldn’t turn off? Yup, you guessed it, now’s the time to train your pooch to wake you up.

Not only is having your pooch wake you up early an extremely convenient, impressive, and cute trick for him to learn, it also has some extremely important benefits. What if the worst were to happen and there was a fire for example, wouldn’t you want your pooch to wake you up? Training your dog this trick could one day save your life and the lives of those you love. However, this trick doesn’t come naturally to all pups and will be an easier task for larger dogs with a bigger bark to learn, as they’ll be louder and able to catch your attention more easily. This isn’t to say smaller breeds can’t learn as well, though. While not the most difficult of tricks to teach, it isn’t exactly the easiest either and could take your pooch a few weeks to a month to learn properly.

First things first, to get started you’ll need your trusty alarm clock! You’ll be teaching your dog that this is the signal he needs to hear to wake you up. You’ll need a good attitude and patience, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will it take a day for your pooch to learn to wake you, you’ll need to teach him in stages. Although it depends on how you would like your dog to wake you up, you’ll need a form of reward. For those heavy sleepers out there, treats as a reward should do the trick. However, if you would like a lighter awakening, grab some jam or peanut butter, as this will be good for your dog to lick off of you, waking you up in a more gentle fashion. For those of you into clicker training, grab your clicker as well before we get started, as you can use this to help teach him the correct wake-up behaviors.