Keep in mind I have a rudimentary understanding of REST. Let's say I have this URL:

http://api.animals.com/v1/dogs/1/

And now, I want to make the server make the dog bark. Only the server knows how to do this. Let's say I want to have it run on a CRON job that makes the dog bark every 10 minutes for the rest of eternity. What does that call look like? I kind of want to do this:

URL request:

ACTION http://api.animals.com/v1/dogs/1/

In the request body:

{"action":"bark"}

Before you get mad at me for making up my own HTTP method, help me out and give me a better idea on how I should invoke a server-side method in a RESTful way. :)

EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION

Some more clarification around what the "bark" method does. Here are some options that may result in differently structured API calls:

1. bark just sends an email to dog.email and records nothing.
2. bark sends an email to dog.email and the increments dog.barkCount by 1.
3. bark creates a new "bark" record with bark.timestamp recording when the bark occured. It also increments dog.barkCount by 1.
4. bark runs a system command to pull the latest version of the dog code down from Github. It then sends a text message to dog.owner telling them that the new dog code is in production.