Obedience Training For Dogs: Get Rid Of Your Dog-Fuelled Stress
January 22nd, 2010Is your dog’s bad behavior causing you stress? Don’t put it off any longer. It’s time to get down to some serious dog obedience 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!
The Basic Needs of A Dog
With power comes great responsibility. If you don’t fulfill your dog’s basic needs, don’t be surprised if your dog’s behavior continues to stress you out. What are the basic needs? Here are the main ones:
- water and sufficient healthy food
- regular daily exercise
- company and social interaction
- an environment which stimulates him.
The main point in dog training is to adopt positive and negative reinforcement. When your dog engages in a behavior that is desired, you should reward him with a treat or affection. It’s vital that the reward comes immediately after the desired behavior or the two things will not be connected by the dog.
It’s best to focus 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 productive or compassionate way to train dogs and will only lead to a fearful and neurotic dog. You can say a firm “No” in a growling tone of voice to stop him behaving badly. Perhaps most effective is to ignore your dog when he misbehaves. Dogs want your attention and if you ignore him – that will be negative reinforcement in itself.
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 should study 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 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 positioning yourself up as alpha dog:
-eat a biscuit or two in front of your dog just before you feed him. The alpha dog always eats first.
-don’t let 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 obedience training. I recommend you look into the most systematic of training methods: clicker training.