While people are starting to put up their Christmas trees ahead of the festive season, one dog trainer has shared her simple yet effective method of preventing dogs from attacking your tree
A dog trainer has shared her simple yet effective method for getting curious and excited pups to stay away from Christmas trees this December.
As the festive Christmas season is quickly approaching, many households will be looking to put their Christmas trees up in their homes, if they haven’t already done so. However, for pet owners, this might have come to be a more challenging thing to do as expected, as animals often end up being curious about the new décor item in your home. But not to worry, as one dog owner has now shared her go-to method of training dogs to stay away from Christmas trees, which you can recreate at home.
Taking to TikTok,. a dog trainer under the username ‘trainuppupofficial’, who often share her dog training tips and tricks to other dog owners, has shared how you can make pups disinterested in Christmas trees, just by using a handful of treats.
“How to train your dog not to destroy your Christmas tree,” she said at the start of her video.
She went on to explain that some dog owners may think that it’s an impossible challenge to have a Christmas tree with a cheeky pup around the house.
“But actually, it’s quite easy to train them to ignore a tree,” she said, before explaining what you should do.
She went on to say that you should grab a handful of treats, before throwing one towards the Christmas tree, letting your dog run up to eat it.
Once the dog has eaten it and their head comes off the ground, she explained to dropping treats around your feet and playing with your dog away from the tree.
“Very quickly, your pup will realise there’s way more value in ignoring the tree and doing stuff with you, than interacting with it,” she explained.
Several people soon took to the comment section to share their thoughts, while some also took the opportunity to ask more questions about keeping dogs away from Christmas tree.
Some viewers complained, saying they dogs only got to the tree when their humans were out of this. For this common problem, the dog trainer said: “You will have to block access to it when you are not around until they have learnt not to, either shut them in a different room, use a crate or put something around the tree so they can’t get it.”
Other ways to keep dog away from Christmas tree
According to Christmas Tree World, there are several things you can do in order to keep your dog away from your Christmas tree. They first thing they say is to wait a few days after putting your tree up to decorate it, as this will allow the dog to get used to having the tree around, and they will most likely have lost interest in it by the time you start to decorate it.
And when it comes to decorating it, they also recommend putting more fragile decorations high up in the tree and out of reach for your dog, including the fairy lights and tinsel.
If you find that your dog is sill interested in the tree, they also recommend using spraying dog repellent around the bottom branches. These sprays are pet-safe, but they taste and smell bad for dogs, which will make them stay away.