This is a super fun trick!

If you are concerned that your dog may offer to take off people’s socks when they don’t want their socks taken off:

Use a ‘special’ sock that you keep for this trick
Train it in a different location – so for example your kitchen, not the bedroom where people will be putting on and taking off socks!
Never ever reinforce it if they offer it when you haven’t cued it!
How we start this will depend on what skills your dog already has – for example I could cue my dogs to ‘take’ (put their mouth on something), ‘hold’ (keep hold of it securely) and ‘back’ (reverse) and they would pull the sock off!

To create the pull back a really good method is to initially let the dog take the sock from you easily – so the goal in their brain becomes ‘take the sock from you’, and then we can gradually start holding it more firmly, mark and reward the pull back behaviour that we are looking for and then begin to put it on the very tips of our fingers, and gradually put it further and further on, until they are fully pulling it off!

Some dogs may be at risk of swallowing socks – if you think there is any risk of your dog swallowing a sock use something like a big slipper sock that is impossible for them to swallow.