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May
23
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Obedience Training For Dogs: Get Rid Of Your Dog-Fuelled Stress |
Are you having problems with your dog behaving badly? Don’t put it off any longer. 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, training should always be fun for your dog or it will quickly get bored!
What Are Your Dog’s Basic Need?
With power comes great responsibility. If you don’t fulfill your dog’s basic needs, you shouldn’t be surprised if you have a badly behaved or neurotic dog. What are the basic needs? Here are the main ones:
- water and food
- regular daily exercise
- social interaction with dogs and people
- a stimulating environment.
The main point in dog training is to understand positive and negative reinforcement. When your dog does a behavior that you want to encourage, you should reward him with a treat or affection. The treat or affection must come as soon after the behavior as humanly possible in order for it to be effective.
It’s best to focus on positive reinforcement for behavior you want to encourage rather than negative reinforcement for unwanted behaviors. This has been found to be a more productive way of training.
Physical punishment is not productive or humane 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 engaging in an unwanted behavior. Ignoring your dog and turning away from him is the most productive thing for you to do when he behaves badly. Dogs want your attention and being ignored is negative reinforcement enough.
You should learn to see your dog as a dog, not a human being. It will help you to do this if you study dog communication and the dynamics of a dog pack. You need to learn what their body language means: the position of the tail, the mouth positions, the ear position and the sounds they make.
Being pack leader or alpha dog is vital if you want your dog to behave well. 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 advice on setting yourself up as pack leader:
-eat a biscuit or two in front of your dog as he waits for his food. The pack leader always eats first.
-don’t let him to onto 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.
