Dog Training in Simple Steps


You must remember that patience is your biggest virtue when dog training. Fear of punishment will simply make your dog confused. By simply ignoring your dog you will send him a clear enough message that he should not repeat that particular behaviour. Your dog might do the wrong thing several times but patience and persistence will win through in the end. Your dog just wants to please you and this is the key to him learning how to obey you.
Dog training is essentially a process of instant positive reinforcement, it should be fun for both you and your dog and neither of you should be getting bored with the process. Bearing this in mind you should limit training periods to no more than about 15 minutes a day. Initially you should use a quiet area of your home or garden and start with basic commands like heel, sit, stay and come. Praise him as soon as he does something right, ignore wrong behavior. Reinforce the praise with a small treat. You don't want to make your dog fat so small treat is important. Do not move on from these four basic commands until your dog correctly obeys them every time.

When your dog begins to obey these commands delay the treat but continue to provide instant praise. Eventually he should perform the command without any treat at all. You should also go to busier and louder places where the dog's attention will be compromised and make obeying more demanding.

I should also emphasize what I mean by 'instant positive reinforcement' because this is where so many owners go wrong. Instant in this context means within 2 seconds of the action. Any longer and your dog will fail to connect the action with the reinforcement. It is so easy to confuse your dog if you are slow with the encouragement. For example, suppose you are teaching the 'Sit' command. An untrained dog when first learning the 'Sit' command will will sometimes sit and then stand almost immediately afterwards. If you are at all slow with the praise then you could cause your dog to associate the 'Sit' command with a 'stand' action. So be careful!
Only advance to new commands when the four old ones are obeyed first time in all circumstances.
Finally you have to be consistent. If there is more than one person involved in the training then to avoid confusing the dog they have to agree on a general approach.

About the Author

John Thompson: Go to my dog training guide to get more detailed information on dog training. In this website you will find detailed articles covering house training, crate and clicker training as well.

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