If you ask one hundred people, you may very well get one hundred different tips on training dogs. Everyone seems to have their won opinion about what’s important when it comes to dog training, but there are a few basics that you need to pay attention to if you expect to have a well-behaved canine.
One of the most important tips for training your dog is to reward good behavior. Positive reinforcement will let your dog know what behavior is expected out of him. Give plenty of affection and love, and also a treat or two. The other side of this is to ignore bad behavior. Do not severely punish your dog for bad behavior, simply ignore it and he will get the message.
Don’t make training sessions too long. Puppies would rather play then attend classes, so don’t make marathon training sessions. Fifteen to thirty minutes of focused training is better than two hours of trying to make your dog do something it would rather not do.
Be firm and consistent with your commands. If you have a young dog, he is still trying to figure out who is in control. Make sure he knows that you’re the boss. You can reinforce this in a number of ways. For instance, avoid giving a command that you cannot enforce immediately. If the dog gets away with ignoring the command, he’ll feel as though he is the alpha, when this is really your position.
Another one of the important tips on dog training is to use the same volume and tone in your verbal commands, and keep plenty of praise in your voice. Dogs need affection the same way humans do. They react in a positive fashion when they are supplied with plenty of love.
Pick a quiet place to train your dog. At a crowded park or near a busy street is no place to get a dog to concentrate on your commands. If there are too many distractions to deal with you will end up frustrated and waste a training session. Other dogs are a major distraction.
When it comes to house training, the old method of rubbing a dog’s nose in it doesn’t have much popularity anymore. All you really end up doing is making sure that your dog won’t come when you call him, and also making him afraid of you. Yelling and screaming will also accomplish the same thing.
Your dog will never learn to think like you, so you shouldn’t expect that. A better and more realistic approach is to think like your dog. An example would be constant barking. Even though it’s a domestic animal, your dog still has primitive instincts. Try to understand why it’s barking and then eliminate the cause.
Out of all the tips on dog training, perhaps the most important is to be patient. Remember that your dog has no real attention span and keep training sessions short. Don’t become frustrated if you need to repeatedly reinforce commands and routines. Master these essentials training tips and you will be proud of your well behaved canine.