dog behavior training

Come is the most important command as it will be needed regularly throughout your dog’s life.  Sometimes this might be needed in a tricky situation and for this reason, a very quick response is what is required. It will not always happen but in order to reduce any risk while the dog is young, you must ensure that only the quick response is rewarded.

Come follows on naturally from Stay in an ideal world, but as coming to you will in many cases be more natural for a puppy than staying away, it might not always work in the prescribed sequence initially but should certainly be trained that way as reinforcement as your dog learns the basic set of commands. By doing this to test your dog occasionally as he is learning, it will also allow you to practice of the preferred association of commands and gestures.

Come as a command can be taught most easily initially as you give the puppy its food, by repeating the command as he comes to you, and praising him as he arrives. It will be most easily reinforced by using a retracting lead that you can gently pull towards you when outdoors. This might be done initially as a practice in the garden then as a test of how well he is learning when out on a walk.

A natural practice used with puppies that is not recommended is to encourage it to jump up at you as it reaches you, both as a welcoming and after the “Come” command. With many dogs you want the dog to stay down as it grows older and encouraging it to jump up will at least delay any effective training and might lead to other behavior problems later. No problem with him jumping up, but only when you deem it acceptable.

The other common error is to chase your dog if he is not returning. This might become a game for him, though a game of chase when he is beyond basic training is just good fun. The way to get almost every dog to come back is to walk away and keep walking and he will soon follow.

Accompanying his movement towards you by a bend of your knees often proves useful as it is a gesture that your dog can see from some distance and can be used to encourage him not to jump when trained well.

The wide range of breeds of terrier have one thing in common, their strong will. They can test patience to the limit and beyond, so you need patience in abundance to train terriers. The key is to align what they want with what you are trying to train them to do.

Full of energy, terriers like attention. Praising your terrier for doing the right thing generally works better than being negative, as they are highly inclined to react, and not for the better, in the latter case. However, keep rewards to an absolute minimum or they will become overweight quite quickly. So lavish praise and affection works best, when it is deserved.

In terms of commands, a snap of your fingers works well to achieve “sit”, couple with an outstretched arm to achieve “sit away”. You should use the words “sit” and “away” as well, but they will be less effective than with other breeds. Standard verbal commands do not work quite so well, unless your terrier is gaining what she wants, which might be a toy, playing a game or something that makes use of their affinity for running, chasing and the like. Hence small obstacle courses can be a useful and enjoyable training aid and if they incorporate hurdles and/or tunnels, so much the better.

With terriers, I’ve found that combining commands and gestures are most easy to reinforce while out walking - after a little while rather than too early when they are still expending some of that pent-up energy! For an excellent training course that I applied with our Staffordshire Terrier and wholeheartedly recommend, click here.

Terriers will learn the basic commands, but as you can gather from the above, usually through slightly different commands and over a longer period than some other breeds. Keep your expectations realistic, be prepared for your patience to be tested, stay calm, consider the alpha mentality and techniques and you will get there - eventually!

To be the alpha, the leader of the pack that your dog looks to belong to, you should make use of the signs that dogs naturally recognize to continually reinforce the message.

Most good practices in dog behavior training build on the recognition by your dog that you are the alpha of the pack. Many instances of poor dog behavior arise from the dog not recognizing or sometimes challenging your position.

You don’t want your dog to be too submissive; it is her level of assertiveness that requires some control. To achieve this, yet again consistency is essential. It will take time, patience and repetition on your part with difficult cases.

In a young (6-12 week old) puppy, amongst the aptitude tests used to evaluate assertive characteristics for specialist dog training such as mountain rescue, a test sometimes referred to as the dominance-submission test is used. The puppy is placed on its back and a hand placed on its chest. An assessment is made of how much and for how long the puppy struggles before relaxing by, for example, dropping its paws, dropping its head back or looking away from the evaluator. There will be some variation by breed; most terriers don’t normally react too well to this but a Labador Retriever will often relax in a shorter time, which is fine - it’s the degree and nature of protest that tell the experienced evaluator what nature of dog he is dealing with.

Alternative forms of test are to kneel or stand in front of the dog and lift it by the chest, or to lift it gently by its front paws without being aggressive. The dog may react initially but will usually comply, which encourages it to accept its future role as well as giving the tester a further pointer to the dog’s nature.

The physical “lead position” within the pack is usually associated with the alpha. Personally I think it is the owner’s preference as to how far this signal should be taken. While it is clearly sensible not to let your dog greet visitors at the door by being in front of you, whether you want to take it as far as training your dog never to walk in front of you when out walking, under any circumstances, is a matter of choice. 

The next post will review day-to-day signs of alpha behavior and how to strike the right balance in alpha dog training.