Toula - America's Most Talented Pet

Posted by Clare Bristow

PETCO has named Toula, a three year old rescue Border Collie, as America's Most Talented Pet.

In a competition to find the next PETCO Star, Toula beat off the competition with her ability to get a tissue for her Mum when she sneezed, fetch a soda, flush the toilet and numerous other tricks.

Here's a video of Toula showing what a helpful house dog she is:

Clearly Toula's owner, Christine, has put an enormous amount of time and patience into training Toula to do these tricks.

You can train your dog to do similar tricks too. Every action Toula does is prompted by a specific word or sound, for example, when Christine sneezes she knows she needs to find the tissue box and get a tissue.

You can start with getting your dog to find the TV remote for you.

The first step is to teach your dog the name you are going to use for the TV remote and get him used to retrieving it for you. Do this by using the command 'find remote' when you send him to retrieve the TV remote.

The second step is to teach your dog to find the TV remote after you've hidden it.

To do this get your dog to sit, stay and watch you go and place the remote just out of his sight. Return to him and release with the command 'find remote'; repeat this a number of times so he really understands what the command means.

The third step is to make the game harder by going out of your dog's sight to hide the remote.

Keep making the game more challenging for your dog by hiding the remote in obscure places and giving the release command to find it whilst you're sitting on the sofa or wherever you sit to watch TV; remember to give lots of praise when he brings the remote back to you.

Once your dog is reliably finding the TV remote it's time to impress your friends with your dog's new trick - then start teaching him the name of other objects to find and bring to you.

Have fun!

Did you enjoy this post? Subscribe to the Dog Topics feed to be notified every time a new post is added to this blog.