Is your dog’s bad behavior causing you stress? Don’t just put it with it. It’s time to start some consistent obedience training for your dog. This means you need to proceed with consistency and persistency with your training. However, training should always be fun for your dog or it will quickly get bored!
The Basic Needs of A Dog
Your dog has to rely on you to provide for him. If you don’t satisfy your dog’s basic needs, it shouldn’t be a surprise if your dog behaves badly. What are the basic needs? Here are the main ones:
- water and food
- exercise
- company and social interaction
- a stimulating environment.
The main principle in training your dog is to understand positive and negative reinforcement. When your dog does a behavior that is desired, you should reward him with a treat or affection. It’s crucial that the reward comes immediately after the desired behavior or the two things will not be connected by the dog.
It’s best to concentrate on positive reinforcement for behavior you want to encourage rather than negative reinforcement for unwanted 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 a fearful and neurotic 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 behaves badly. Dogs love attention and being ignored is negative reinforcement enough.
You should learn to see your dog as a dog, not a human being. Dogs have their own way of communicating which you will not understand unless you study it. You read about what their body language means: the position of the tail, the mouth positions, the ear position and the sounds they make.
For effective training, you must position yourself as the alpha dog or pack leader. 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 advice on setting yourself up as alpha dog:
-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.
-make sure you go through doors before your dog.
This is an introduction to some important points in dog obedience training. I recommend you look into the most systematic of training methods: dog clicker training.
