A lot of people tell me that my dog is extremely well-behaved and I know this to be true. There have been 2 dogs that I have had in my life that were almost effortless to raise in that they never did anything they were not supposed to, would NEVER use the bathroom on the floor and learned ways of telling you when they needed something. I've also had two dogs in my lifetime that were absolute nightmares that would chew up furniture, get into the trash, poop on the floor like it was outdoors, and really anything else you can imagine that would be considered undesirable behavior.
Nadi, my 9 year old Shih-Tzu, never does anything wrong. She also has a tremendous amount of patience and will do what she is told on command basically all the time. This comes in handy when I feel like taking silly photos of her.
we've got this little game that we play where she is sitting in one of her many beds and I will put one of her many toys on top of her head and just say "stay!" She doesn't move for the most part as I slowly make my way across the room to the treat box.
She's got a lot of toys. While I am quite certain she would rather not have them balanced on her head, she complies because she knows that a delicious snack is waiting afterwards. Well, I say delicious but I tried one not that long ago and they are disgusting. I don't know how the manufacturers determine that dogs are going to find these things palatable.
one of her favorite toys is this rope thing that I think is quite common with all dogs. This is the smallest size that they have at the store and she can barely open her mouth wide enough to hold it. we will take it up to the gym on the top floor here and throw it across the room and I recently taught her that she is not to leave her toy behind, as she did one day. Thankfully the staff knew that it belonged to me and returned it.
She carries the rope-toy out of the gym, into the elevator, and then just looks at me while we wait to get down to our floor. She then patiently waits at my apartment door while I unlock it, then runs across the room to her toy storage area and will sit there with the rope toy in her mouth while she waits for me to tell her to drop it.
It's funny to me because I didn't really train her to do this because how would you? She just is kind of able to tell what I am looking for and will try everything until she gets it right.
Treats are just part of her life because honestly, it's been a while since she did anything that I didn't like other than not having a great deal of street smarts and that is ok because if we are outside she is almost never off the leash. When you live in a city with as much traffic as I do, I think that should be the human's job.
I hope that if you have a dog that you experience as good of behavior as I do although I suspect that most people do not. I don't know if I got lucky or if I am just a good owner, but Nadi is definitely better behaved than almost any other dog that I have ever met.