This article seeks to draw out the most vital elements in training your dog. It addresses 5 areas we need to be mindful when we train our dog and teach them new tricks
Today, I am going to share 5 vital dog training tips that you need to bear in mind. These are
Vital Dog Training Tips 1 : Patience
Training a dog is not something that you can do in a hurry. You have to remember that something that looks simple may be quite challenging for your dog.
The worst thing you can do is to lose patience and vent your anger when your dog doesn't get it right. This is because dogs are quite sensitive creatures and are very susceptible to your mood swings.
Tip 2 : Repetition and Consistency
You need to be conistent with your tone, commands and hand signals. This is so that she can associate the certain signal to the appropriate behaviour. Being inconsistent will confuse her, thus, not producing the behaviour expected of her.
If there are other people responsible for training your dog, make sure they adopt the same signals.
After she has got the hang of the signals, keep repeating to reinforce it. This will then lead to it being internalised in her. After which, she will produce the desired behaviour every time you give the command.
Vital Dog Training Tip 3 : Simplify
Always simplify tricks into a series of small actions. A certain trick may appear to be simple but it may be complex for a dog to remember all at one go.
So, always think through the trick that you would like your dog to perform. See how many steps it can be broken down into. Only then, you should start teaching your dog based on the series of step, one building on the last step. Do this until your dog is able to perform the entire trick.
Actually, when you do this, it is not one trick but several tricks that you have taught your dog in one go. Consider my favourite trick, the dancing trick. It involves my maltipoo to stand on her 2 hind legs, stretching out her front paws and jumping.
To get her to perform this, I have to break it down to 4 steps, namely Sit, Paw, High 5 and finally dance.
Tip 4 : Reward and Punishment
Reward her for good behaviour and ability to perform the trick with words of encouragement, approval and treats.
Punish her when she engages in unwanted behaviours, example, jumping at you and barking when you come back for work. When I say punish, I don't mean beating. What I usually use is to withdraw my attention from her until she gets the message.
Back to the example of jumping at you. You can just move away from her whenever she does that and try coming back to her when she stops. After a while, she gets the message what is the behaviour that you doesn't want from her.
Tip 5 : Bonding with Her
Besides training your dog, sometimes you need to chill and just spend quality time and bonding with her. This will strengthen your bond and when you need to train her, she will have the desire to please and obey you.
For easy way to train your dog, Check this out
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