How Not To Train A Dog
Consistency, persistence, patience, etc. Yep, read it, done it, got the tee-shirt?
Well, repetitive and boring as they sound, these are the main elements of training dogs and several other types of pet. But when you see someone else’s well-behaved dog while you’re still struggling, it’s probably worth a refresher of the things that don’t work in order to remind us all that the things we should be doing, the first three words of this post, are the right approach.
- Violence is a complete no-no, simply because it is going to create a timid pet dog or one that decides to respond in kind and possibly when least expected. Either way, its the end of any credible or rewarding dog-owning relationship.
- Dogs are neither children or adults and do not respond to words like we do. They respond to tones of voice, the keeper’s behavior and gestures. True, one or two words may be a simple command, but it’s the repetition of something they recognise, often in conjunction with a gesture, that they respond to, and not any literal understanding of the command.
- To quote Cesar Milan, dogs live in the “now”, especially young ones; so do the old ones, but they have also got wise to the easy path to get what they want and learned a few simple patterns in your behavior. Hence the need for consistency and recognition on your part to react quickly to communicate to your dog the right behavior has just been carried out successfully.
- Training “sessions”, i.e. in a schedule, are really only for dogs that have progressed into advanced forms of shows and exhibitions, where it may well be almost a way of life. For inexperienced dogs, most dogs as a rule, and certainly puppies, they are picking up signals from you all the time and so training is really achieved through day-to-day interaction between you and your dog, which really reinforces the opening few words above. Addressing particular issues will be helped through some of the suggestions on this site but it is still based on consistency, persistence and patience!
