Saturday, April 28, 2012

Canine Training Made Easy

By Cleveland Harmon


Try to schedule each training session at roughly the same time each day. You want your dog to get into a pattern where he know's it's coming and is excited for it. If your dog is excited for it he's much more likely to succeed, just as if humans are excited for something they're more likely to succeed.

When training your dog, do it in short sessions, no more than fifteen to twenty minutes each session. This keeps your dog from becoming bored and uninterested in the training. More importantly, it ensures that your focus is entirely on training, which is vital to ensuring your dog's success.

To help train your dog, you must assert yourself as the dominant one in your relationship by refusing to give the dog undeserved attention or food. When you convince your dog you run the show and, in addition, let the dog recognize you can use that power to give it something it wants, your dog will obey your commands more effectively.

If you are serious about training your dog, remember to be a dog during training. Dogs establish control and behavior through physical commands and less through spoken command. When you want your dog to exhibit a certain behavior, use nudges or posture adjustments physically along with your verbal commands. These are traits your dog expects and will respond accordingly.

When training your dog, do it in short sessions, no more than fifteen to twenty minutes each session. This keeps your dog from becoming bored and uninterested in the training. More importantly, it ensures that your focus is entirely on training, which is vital to ensuring your dog's success.

Breaking your dog's attention is the key to gaining control. Dogs will focus on something and ignore all else unless something breaks that attention. By nudging or tapping the dog while issuing a control sound or word is usually all it will take to bring the dog's focus back to you. With enough repetition your dog will focus on other things less and less, opting to wait for signals from you.

As you begin training your dog, create a verbal cue that allows your pet to understand the exact moment that they correctly complete your command. A word like "yes," can be an effective bridge between the time that the dog exhibits the behavior and the time that they receive the reward.

Throughout your dog's training program, continue to play with them as much as possible. Interacting through games and activities is one way to bond with your pet and relieve stress. Dogs respond much better to people they trust, so go out and throw a ball, play tug of war or just rub their belly.

When training your dog to walk on a leash, remember that your dog should follow where you lead, not the other way around. Dogs are pack animals, and the leader of the pack always travels in front. You want your dog to see you as the leader, so they need to learn to walk behind you.

Never cave in to bad behavior. Your dog will always love you, but it needs to know that you're the boss. Don't encourage bad behavior and let your dog know that any such behavior will be met with punishment. At the same time, make sure you reward good behavior as well.




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