Obedience Train Your Dog: How To Have A Satisfied Dog And A Happy Owner
Are you having problems with your dog behaving badly? Don’t procrastinate. It’s time to begin some consistent dog obedience training. This means you should 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, don’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 exercise
- company and social interaction
- a stimulating environment.
The main principle in training your dog is to utilise 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 concentrate on positive reinforcement for wanted behaviors rather than negative reinforcement for unwanted behaviors. This has been found to be a more productive way of training.
Physical punishment is not an effective or compassionate 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 behaving badly. Ignoring your dog and turning away from him is the most productive thing for you to do when he misbehaves. Dogs crave attention and being ignored is negative reinforcement enough.
An important aspect of training is to understand that a dog is a dog, not a human being. Don’t humanize him. It will help you to do this if you study dog communication and the dynamics of a dog pack. You read about what their body language means. They have various ways of communicating: with their tail, head position, ear position, mouth and teeth and vocally with various kinds of barks, growls and whines.
For effective training, you must position yourself as the alpha dog or pack leader. If your dog is the alpha dog, 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 positioning yourself up as alpha dog:
-eat a a little snack in front of your dog as he waits for his food. The alpha dog always eats before the pack members.
-don’t allow him to onto the sofa or bed. The alpha dog sleeps on higher ground.
-don’t allow him to go through the door before you.
This is an introduction to some important points in dog training. I recommend you look into the most systematic of training methods: dog clicker training.
