Is your dog driving you crazy with his bad behavior? Don t just put it with it. It s time to begin some basic puppy training for your dog. This means you should be consistent and persistent with your training. However, training should always be fun for your dog or it will quickly get bored!
Understand Your Dog Basic Needs
Having a dog is a responsibility. If you don t satisfy your dog’s basic needs, you shouldn’t be surprised if your dog’s behavior continues to stress you out. What are the basic needs? Here are the main ones:
- food and water
- regular exercise
- company and social interaction
- an environment which stimulates him.
The main principle in training your dog is to understand positive and negative reinforcement. When your dog does a behavior that is wanted, you should reward him with a treat or affection. It’s crucial that the reward comes immediately after the wanted behavior or the dog will not connect the two thing.
It s best to focus on positive reinforcement for wanted behaviors rather than negative reinforcement for bad behaviors. This has been found to be a more effective way of training.
Physical punishment is not productive or compassionate way to train dogs and will only lead to your dog being neurotic and fearful. That’s not going to be a good relationship between man and dog. You can say a firm No in a growling tone of voice to stop him behaving badly. Perhaps most effective is to ignore your dog when he does something you don t like. Dogs love attention and being ignored is negative reinforcement enough.
At all costs you should avoid humanizing your dog. It will help you to do this if you study dog communication and the dynamics of a dog pack. You read about what their body language means. They have various ways of communicating: with their tail, head position, ear position, mouth and teeth and vocally with various kinds of barks, growls and whines.
Another important aspect of training is to position yourself as the pack leader. If your dog is pack leader, you will be fighting a losing battle to get him to behave as you want. Why would he take notice of one of his pack member? Some pointers to set yourself up as pack leader:
-eat a a little snack in front of your dog as he waits for his food. The pack leader always eats first.
-don t allow him to onto the sofa or bed. The pack leader sleeps on higher ground.
-make sure you go through doors before your dog.
This is an introduction to some important points in obedience training for dogs. I recommend you look into the most systematic of training methods: clicker training.
Posted under Puppy Training Classes
This post was written by Noel DCosta on July 26, 2009
