Dog Training Basics

Are you having problems with your dog behaving badly? Don’t procrastinate. It’s time to get down to some serious dog training. This means you need to proceed with consistency and persistency with your training. However, training should always be fun for your dog or it will quickly get bored!

Understand Your Dog Basic Needs

Your dog has to rely on you to provide for him. If you don’t satisfy your dog’s basic needs, it shouldn’t be a surprise if your dog’s behavior continues to stress you out. What are the basic needs? Here are the main ones:

• water and food
• exercise
• social interaction with dogs and people
• a stimulating environment.

The main principle in dog training is to utilise positive and negative reinforcement. When your dog does a behavior that is wanted, 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 behavior you want to encourage rather than negative reinforcement for undesired 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 engaging in an unwanted behavior. Ignoring your dog and turning away from him is the most productive thing for you to do when he misbehaves. Dogs love attention and being ignored is negative reinforcement enough.

At all costs you should avoid humanizing your dog. Dogs have their own way of communicating which you will not understand unless you study it. 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.

Another important aspect of training is to position yourself as the pack leader. If your dog is pack leader, he is never going to be well-behaved for you because he thinks you are one of his pack. Some advice on setting yourself up as pack leader:
-eat a some food in front of your dog as he waits for his food. The alpha dog always eats first.
-don’t let him to get on the sofa or bed. The pack leader 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: clicker training.

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