When training your dog it’s important to always remain patient and level headed. Remember your dog is a dog! He doesn’t understand things the same way that you do. He will not understand if you yell instructions at him. He will only become scared of you if you do this. This is not a good way for him to learn.
Dogs are very habitual. Their lives revolve around ritual and their internal body clock and routine. They anticipate your return from work at a certain time. They expect their meals at a certain time.
You can use this information in your dog training. This sort of habitual behavior is part of why dog’s are easy animals to train (compared to other animals.) Of course the goal of dog obedience training is for the dog to respond with a particular reaction to a particular command.
Because of the habitual nature of dogs it’s important that you be extremely consistent in your training. Do not change things up on your dog! This will only confuse him. You should go through your routines with him the exact same way every time. When you tell your dog to sit you need to make sure that he does in fact sit before going on to the next command. This consistency will help your dog training efforts be more effective.
Perhaps the most important point with dog training is to keep a level head. You cannot allow yourself to let your temper flare or to yell at or hit your dog. Not only for the obvious moral reasons that you wouldn’t want to treat your dog in this way but also because this sort of behavior will make it much more difficult to train your dog.
Your dog doesn’t know how to learn from this sort of behavior. Your dog will only become afraid of you and it will make it harder to train him in the future.
Another important point of dog training is to make sure you reward your dog for a good behavior or for doing a trick in the correct way. This is important because it helps build your relationship with your dog and lets them know that you like their good behavior. Like with all aspects of dog training you need to be consistent with rewarding your dog.
Of course this does not mean to give your dog a food treat every time they do something right because that would not be good for them and would also become very expensive. You don’t need to give your dog the same treat every time just some sort of treat whether it’s letting them play with their favorite toy, giving them a friendly pat on the head with encouraging words in a friendly voice, or giving them a food treat.
Matthew Yoho
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