Doggy Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘secrets to dog training’

When you first set out to teach your pet dog or puppy to come, there are a few tips and tricks that Im going to share with you, to make it more successful!

I have adapted these free techniques from the outstanding ‘Secrets to Dog Training‘ by Daniel Stephens. Jump straight to it here, if you wish to read more.

“Come dog”

Firstly, and possibly the most crucial, is that you should never call your dog over if you are going to do something that he might class as ‘negative’ to him.. Some prime examples are include tying him up, bathing him (if he hates that!), telling him off, smacking, hitting or generally disciplining him..

Dont call over and punish your pet for running away, when he comes over. You dont want your dog to learn that doing as you say, is a punishment.If your dog already knows bad associations with come, like he thinks it equals 'run now!' or if he becomes oblivious to it you may have to use a different command with a new sound. 

Forget your old come command and teach this exercise using a new, clear word. ‘Here’ is a popular one, as is 'oi', but you can make up any command that suits you or that you think your dog might respond to.

Ideally, your dog should hear this new command, stop whatever hes doing and sit in front of you! For best results, you should master teaching this exercise as two seperate pieces.

The two processes can be taught seperate till the dog has them both mastered, when this happens you can bring them together.

“Come sit in front of me”

Start with putting your dog on a short ish leash. Get the attention of your pet and position the treat at nose level. Now walk back 3 or 4 steps with the treat held up.

With your waiting dog in front, you can hold up a tidbit of food so that he is motioned to sit and wait.

Command him to sit, and when he sits to your satisfaction, give him the treat by lowing it to his mouth. Never let him jump up to get it!

Next time, do the process standing in place and holding your ground, instead of moving back. Try to eliminate the treat part of the exercise, and change to a reinforcing command. Doing this helps your dog to accept your praise as a reward.

You can read part two of this article, for free, as my website (that has hundreds of other free dog training tips) here, at dog commands.

The biggest secret to training your dog is understanding the process of positive reinforcement. All that’s really required after that is lots of patience and consistency. Most problem behaviors in dogs arise from not understanding reinforcement or from not applying it consistently.

To use it consistently, you will need an abundance of patience. You need to understand the time and effort needed to train a dog. You must also appreciate that you need to be consistent every time you are with your dog, not just during training sessions. This means that you also need your family members and anyone who interacts with your dog to be consistent also.

Positive conditioning means that a positive reinforcement i.e. pleasant stimulus when your dog does some action will encourage him to perform that particular action again. Many dog owners will give lots of positive reinforcements when their dog is doing unwanted behaviors. For example, they give affection to their dog as it jumps up on them when they enter the house. Affection is a positive reinforcement and so the dog is being encouraged to jump up on people.

I enjoy watching the Dog Whisperer on TV. One thing I notice is that owners are invariably reinforcing negative behaviors in their dogs without being aware of it. And this is in spite of the fact that they are fully aware of the process from watching Cesar on the program. The Dog Whisperer is very different which is why the dogs behave differently with him. He is always consistent and only give any attention to the dog when it is calm and behaving in a well-mannered fashion. In nearly all cases that he helps, the problems are with the owner and his inconsistency.

Lots of awareness and self-discipline are needed to stop yourself giving affection to a misbehaving dog. You also need to be aware that any attention, even when it’s shouting at your dog “stop barking”, may act as a positive reinforcement. So, it may be best to respond to unwanted behaviors by ignoring them and turning away from your dog.

Focusing on reinforcing positive behavior is more effective than trying to negatively reinforce unwanted behavior. The more you reinforce positive behaviors, the less the unwanted behaviors will occur.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t stop your dog doing unwanted behaviors. It just means that it’s not part of your training process – it’s just damage control. For example, if he jumps on the food counter, you can just pull him off.

How do you positively reinforce actions you want to encourage? You reward the behavior by giving a tasty treat or by giving affection. Using small tasty treats is probably the easiest method. The treat needs to be given as close in time to the behavior as possible. Because of the importance of timing, the use of a clicker makes the reward process clearer to your dog. The clicker sound is used to mark the behavior precisely as it happens and the treat comes immediately afterwards. I encourage you to look more into the whole subject of clicker training since it does streamline process of positive reinforcement.

Read more about the Secrets to Dog Training, about clicker training for dogs and about dealing with behavior problems in dogs in general.