Sending your dog to his bed is a convenient way to prevent him from pestering guests, running off with the game pieces when your kids are playing on the living room floor, begging or stealing food while you are cooking, etc. Lying on his bed allows your dog to remain in the room while keeping him from getting in trouble. While it would be unreasonable to expect your dog to hold a sit or down stay for 30 minutes without moving, asking him to remain on his bed while allowing him to change position is perfectly fair.

Getting started: First we are going to teach your dog that his bed is a wonderful place, then we will teach him to go there and stay there. Make sure to have lots of treats available. I prefer to use dry dog food kibble for this, which your dog should be willing to work for if he isn’t being overfed. Just subtract the kibble used for training from his next meal.

1. Lure your dog onto his bed. Once he is on the bed, drop kibble on the bed every few seconds for a solid minute. Use a leash and body blocking to prevent your dog from leaving the bed. Be sure to vary your body position.
2. Release your dog from the bed with Free! or OK! and lead him a couple steps away with the leash. Wait and see what happens. If your dog looks at the bed or takes a step towards it, Yes! or Click and start to drop treats on the bed again.
3. Gradually increase the distance you lead your dog away after releasing him from the bed. When he starts to eagerly run back to the bed once you let go of his collar, you can start to name this behavior (Go to Bed, Place, Mat, or when Lexi was a young pest, it was GO TO YOUR ROOM!).
4. Separately from working on building distance, you will want to work on building duration. Start to gradually wait longer between treats. In early training sessions, treats will practically be raining down, but as your dog gets hooked on running to his bed, start to increase and vary the time between treats. So it might look like 2 seconds, 10 seconds, 5 seconds, 20 seconds, 2 seconds, 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 5 seconds and then release your dog. If your dog starts to leave the bed, either block him with your body or use the leash to prevent him from leaving. Once your dog is patiently waiting 30 seconds between treats, you can start to really increase the time between rewards and start to alternate returning to pet your dog with returning with a treat. Over the course of a few weeks of practice, you can switch to primarily petting and praise rewards with occasional treats. 
5. Pitfalls: Be careful your dog doesn’t learn that it pays better to leave the bed and go back then just to stay there. If your dog makes a mistake, don’t immediately reward him for fixing it. Wait to reward until he has been back on the bed for a few seconds. You also want to be sure your dog learns that calm behavior on the bed is the best way to get rewarded. So be sure to offer petting and treats when your dog is lying quietly, rather than fidgeting. Personally, I permit any position on the bed, but I reward more for lying down with head on paws, since that is what I like best.Voilà, now you have a dog who will run to his bed when asked and remain there until you have released him. Now see how many ways you can put it to use!