Is your dog’s bad behavior causing you stress? Don’t procrastinate. It’s time to get down to some consistent obedience training for your dog. This means you should be consistent and persistent with your training. However, make sure your training is always fun or your dog may get bored!
What Are Your Dog’s Basic Need?
Your dog has to rely on you to provide for him. If you don’t provide your dog’s basic needs, you shouldn’t be surprised if your dog behaves badly. What are the basic needs? Here are the main ones:
- water and food
- regular daily exercise
- company and social interaction
- a stimulating environment.
The main principle in dog training is to use positive and negative reinforcement. When your dog engages in a behavior that is desired, you should reward him with a treat or affection. It’s very important that the reward comes immediately after the desired behavior or the two things will not be connected by the dog.
It’s best to focus on positive reinforcement for behavior you want to encourage rather than negative reinforcement for undesired behaviors. This has been found to be a more productive way of training.
Physical punishment is not productive or compassionate way to train dogs and will only lead to a fearful and neurotic dog. You can say a firm “No” in a growling tone of voice to stop him engaging in an unwanted behavior. Perhaps most effective is to ignore your dog when he does something you don’t like. Dogs crave attention and if you ignore him - that will be negative reinforcement in itself.
At all costs you should avoid humanizing your dog. Dogs have their own way of communicating which you will not understand unless you study it. You should study 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.
Being pack leader or alpha dog is vital if you want your dog to behave well. If your dog is the alpha dog, he is never going to be well-behaved for you because he thinks you are one of his pack. Some pointers to set yourself up as pack leader:
-eat a biscuit or two in front of your dog just before you feed him. The pack leader always eats first.
-don’t allow him to get on the sofa or bed. The alpha dog sleeps on higher ground.
-don’t allow him to go through the door before you.
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.
