How to Train a Dog to Get a Beer From the Fridge

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Ty Brown with dogbehavioronline.com. I'm here in Utah today teaching you how to train a dog. The topic of today's discussion is teaching your dog how to get a beer from the fridge. Now this is an activity that can be a lot of fun to impress your friends and family when on command your dog runs to the fridge and gets you a drink and brings it back. It's going to take you a lot of work though. In order to accomplish it, you need to break it down into bit sized chunks for the dog. The first thing you need to do is have a dog that knows how to fetch on command. If he'll fetch an item on command, then you can continue in your training. Once he does that, attach something to the door of your refrigerator that he can fetch. Usually some sort of rope or some other object like that so that as he fetches it, grabs it and pulls it, that it opens the fridge. And so get him used to doing that over and over and over. Once he's very good at that, then you can move on. At that point, get him to fetch the drink inside the fridge. Now a lot of dogs aren't going to enjoy the sensation of glass on their teeth, and so in the beginning stages, you may need to use a drink cozy in order to accomplish this. Put a drink cozy around a bottle and have the dog fetch that, and have the dog do it over and over and over. You may want to do this away form the refrigerator setting. And so do this over and over and over and soon the dog will fetch that on command. And then once the dog understands the two pieces, put them together. Tell your dog to go fetch so he opens the fridge. Once the fridge is open, tell him to fetch again so he fetches the bottle and brings it to you. When he does it, you've got to give him a lot of praise. He just did a great job and so you've got to praise him enthusiastically and help him feel that, hey you did a great job. And so with a lot of repetition over a lot of time, you'll be able to impress your friends and family with your dog that fetches you a beer from the fridge."