Dog Training Tips
Dog Obedience Training 101
Dog obedience training is actually not that hard to accomplish once you get the hang of it. As long as you follow a basic set of guidelines, and stick to them, you should succeed. The following article is a list of dog training tips that should help you along.
As a new dog owner and trainer, you may find yourself a bit overwhelmed at first. Do not be discouraged by this. It is quite common and shows a healthy concern for your pets well being. This being said there are a few very simple rules to remember when training your pet.
Dog Obedience Training Requires Persistence
If you remain consistent, keep a level head and reward your dog appropriately then you have won a large part of the battle. What do these three basics entail? We will discuss that in the following few paragraphs.
Dogs are creatures of habit. Every part of their daily life revolves around an internal schedule and routine. They anticipate the return of their owners at a certain time of day and know that meal times occur regularly.
Once trained, they will even exhibit certain behaviors to mark these times of day, such as bringing their empty food dish to their master or waiting near the door for their owners return. To us humans, this may seem a dull existence but our canine companions thrive on consistent routines.
This fact is very useful to a new trainer as it can make your job much easier if you use this knowledge. Why? Because dog obedience training revolves around repetition of certain actions.
The goal behind dog obedience training is the idea that a dog will respond with a certain reaction every time a certain command is given. This means that every time you tell your pet to sit, this will be exactly what will happen.
To make use of the animal’s instinctive behavior in this regard, one must remember to be consistent with training. Go through the routines exactly the same way every time with no variation until they are well in hand.
If you tell your dog to sit, make certain your pet does so before moving on to the next point, even pushing their hindquarters down if necessary to accomplish this end. This rigid consistency will go a long way towards achieving a well-trained pet.
Keep A Cool Head With Your Pooch
Let’s now move along to the next point of keeping a level head, which is also one of the more difficult points. At the end of a long day of work, you are tired, the dog just doesn’t seem to be responding and tempers can flare quite easily.
You may decide this mut is just one of the few who can’t be trained or that you just don’t have the skills. You might be feeling completely discouraged by a seeming lack of interest on the dogs part to learn even the simplest of behaviors.
You will most likely encounter this scenario more than once in your venture at dog training. Just take a moment and consider that the lesson done for the time being and retire to some less strenuous amusement. Dogs are like children and will find the ways to irritate you for fun it seems.
Just like children, they take time and patience. Rome wasn’t built in a day and your dog won’t become a well trained champion over night either.
Now let’s move on to the third major point in being a successful trainer. The reward for doing a behavior or trick correctly. This is a very important part of the training process as it builds your relationship with your pet and shows them your appreciation for their good behaviors.
Again consistent treatment is important in training and a reward should be given every time a performance of a given command is executed properly. This is not saying to give your pet a food treat every time. While an occasional tidbit of food is a great reward, doing so consistently is not.
This would result in an unhealthy pet and be counter productive to your training efforts. Rather than doing this, offer other forms of reward such as rich verbal praise, playing with a favorite toy or petting your dog to show affection.
These rewards will enhance your relationship with your dog and make future training sessions even easier as your pet will anticipate these rewards and want to please you.
If these simple steps are kept in mind, your pets training should be an easy task with many rich rewards. Enjoy your dog and make your bond stronger while training with these three principles.
The 5 Things To Avoid During Training
In training your dog there are a few major downfalls that you are sure to encounter. Knowing them before you reach this point is very helpful to avoiding stressful situations later. The biggest mistake most people make is also the easiest for new trainers to fall victim to. This is the danger of expecting too much.
Dogs are very intelligent creatures and, by and large, very trainable. Thus when you visit the park with your untrained dog and the person next to you is playing Frisbee with their German Shepherd and the Poodle down the way is sitting patiently rather than attacking picnic goers, it is easy to think your dog should know these behaviors from birth.
We often times forget the many hours of training that have been put into these wonderful dogs. Your dog can learn these very same behaviors but it will take time for these lessons to be instilled. Do not expect your dog to learn all of these routines over night. This would merely set you up for downfall number two.
The second problem people encounter is losing their temper. This usually results in an out of breath owner who is yelling at the top of the vocal capacity, a frightened dog and possibly a visit from the local animal welfare department depending on how the individual vents their frustrations. To avoid this downfall, make a conscious effort never to yell at your pet and hitting is always wrong.
Raising your voice to your pet will do little to correct their errant behavior and can do harm to your relationship with the animal. It will result in a nervous animal that cowers from you rather than obeying your commands.
The third thing to avoid falls at the other end of the spectrum. These people let the dog become the master. This is equally detrimental to your relationship with the dog, as the animal has no control to its behaviors and can quickly become a danger to itself and others.
Show Your Dog Who’s The Boss
Dogs are pack animals and quickly decide who the leader is and who follows. If you do not take the leadership role from the beginning, you can rest assured that your pet will.
A dog without a master will run amok and will quickly get into trouble chasing cars and people, destroying property and making a nuisance of itself. This mistake is tantamount to animal abuse and is very nearly as bad as the previous one.
Fourth in line of things to avoid is the mistake of giving up. Many a dog owner has a pet that has never reached its full potential due to the owner losing interest in their dog obedience training. Dogs love to learn, especially when the owner rewards well learned behavior traits.
Many owners, lacking the time or perhaps the patience, will be quite happy to have a pet that merely answers to its name and stops barking when repeatedly shouted at.
Please do not let yourself fall into this trap. Your pet is a highly intelligent animal and is capable of learning so much more. Occasionally, dogs have even been known to develop neuroses due to boredom from not being challenged enough.
This results in an unhealthy animal that can be poorly socialized and destructive of furnishings or even its own body. Your dog can and will respond to your training efforts if given the time to do so.
A fifth point that we keep reiterating (and well we should) is people’s failure to be consistent. If you tell the dog to sit and your pet doesn’t do it, stick with it until they do.
Always use the same command words and enforce the same action each and every time. Manually enforce the command if it is necessary to get the desired reaction and reward the animal with some play time or some verbal praise for properly performing the routine.
Consistency is the major key to training your pet. Repetitive lessons taught on a regular basis with consistent rewards are necessary to the effective training of your pet.
Knowing these five downfalls ahead of time will save you many frustrations while training your pet and will result in a much a healthier and happier relationship with your pet. Hopefully these dog training tips have given you some good ideas.
