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Dog Obedience Training

May 12, 2008

Dog obedience training is a two way communication system. However, what you must understand is that what is obvious to you might not be obvious to your dog, and a certain amount of understanding is necessary before it is achieved acceptably to both parties.

It should also involve good communication between the dog owner and the trainer. What most dog owners want in a well trained dog is simply one that is ’socially acceptable’ and obeys simple commands. It does not have to walk to heel on command, more be well mannered when meeting the neighbors or visiting relatives. Sometimes this can more difficult to achieve than simple obedience commands, which in some cases involve nothing more than the ability to walk at the left leg of the owners, and stop when told to.

The most important factors in training a dog to be obedient is to give praise when the dog does well, and to be firm, but not to punish, when the dog does badly. An absence of reward can be sufficient punishment for a dog that is disobedient, especially if that dog is used to reward for being obedient. The teaching must be consistent and patient. You should not change teaching methods while trying to train a dog and you must expect it to take time for a dog to obey your commands.

When you consider that it takes almost a lifetime to train children, and they still never obey you, why should you expect better of your dog?

If a dog lives with a family, social skills will be learned quicker, since it will quickly learn what is socially acceptable and what is unacceptable behaviour. The way that you can achieve this in an artificial environment is to understand yourself the way that dogs understand reward and punishment. You cannot speak to a dog in the way that it understands concepts. You cannot tell a dog that it is being punished for something that it has just done, since the dog will associate any punishment with what it is doing now; not what it did five second ago.

Dog obedience training involves praising a dog for what it is doing now, and it will then associate that action with praise. The corollary is that if you punish the dog for what it is doing now, it will associate that action with something that it must not do. Let’s look at a simple example. If a dog chases your neighbor’s cat then runs back to you having done so, and you punish it, then the dog will regard the punishment as being associated with coming back to you, rather than chasing the cat.

So be careful how and when you punish a dog. Any punishment must be done at the exact time of the infringement, not once it has been carried out, or you will get a different result to what you want.

A good way to train a dog in obedience is to show it who is in charge. For example, if you refuse to feed a dog until it sits or gives you a paw, then you are demonstrating that you are in charge: you are the alpha creature, and the dog must obey you in order to be fed. Once that hierarchy has been established, the training becomes much easier. If, on the other hand, you allow the same dog to dominate you, then the dog will never obey you. It will, in fact, expect you to obey it, and might even become aggressive when you do not.

An important point you must keep in mind about a dog is that because it cannot talk, it cannot convey its feelings to you in a way that you can understand. A dumb dog is not a dumb child, and it conveys its feelings in a different way than a child would. Dog obedience training is all about connecting with a dog in the way it understands, and showing it who is in charge. You should, however, try to understand what the dog is trying to communicate to you.

If you have seen these home videos that people laugh at with dogs sliding down a hill on its behind, that is not normal canine behaviour, and is probably a sign that it as an anal itch that is most likely worms, or even ticks. If you want reciprocation in dog obedience training, then you should in turn be aware of what a dog is telling you, though not necessarily with an awareness of doing so.

Dog obedience training is important to dogs so that they know who their master is, and to people so that they have happy dogs that know how to behave socially. Whether this is natural is immaterial, since studies have show well trained dogs to be happier than their untrained cousins, and the same to be true of humans!

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Entry Filed under: Animals. .