DOG TRAINING

Dog-Training: The basics

Dog training is imperative if you want to have a pet that is the best pet you could ever hope to have. Without taking the time to teach your dog the basics, your happiness will suffer, the dog’s happiness will suffer, your home will suffer, your neighbors will suffer, and all told, your experience with having adopted a four legged animal who wants nothing better but to understand what is should and should not do will fail.

10 Titles to Choose From:

-Choosing a Puppy
-Getting Ready for Puppy
-Bringing Puppy Home
-Those First Few Nights
-House Training Puppy
-A Trip to the Vet
-Oh, those Puppy Teeth
-Puppy Needs a Friend
-Puppy Manners
-Basics of Puppy Training

Dogs do not speak English. Puppies definitely do not even understand human expressions or emotions at all. Older dogs have had no doubt occasions to figure a few things out. A puppy is coming to your home from their mother and usually litters mates and the care of the breeder. The only play they know is with puppies. They have to learn what is appropriate play behavior with humans. They really don’t know. It is important to find out what behavior of a puppy is actually age appropriate. You want to certainly work with the puppy but to punish a puppy for things that are normal for that age is not really very fair. What it needs to learn is what is wanted and then guide the puppy to those ends. It takes a bit of time. They are young and know nothing, much the way a human baby of three months of age knows nothing, and in fact is quite limited in what it can and cannot control physically. The breeder will have tried to orient a puppy to first experiences. Sometimes they will for example put a leash and collar on a puppy and just let it get used to the feeling. They may let the pup just drag the leash around a bit so it is not fearful of it. You can do this too actually when you first have your pup in a safe area.

It is life in process and learning in process. What a puppy knows is that they are in a totally foreign situation when they arrive at their new adopted home, with not one familiar scent, not one familiar person. They are alone with strangers who are 5000 times their size who are bending over them and reaching often their hands right at their faces, because people like to reach for the heads of dogs. How scary is that to a small animal!

Taking your puppy to obedience classes is really a must at the right age. Generally a dog’s attention span is a bit better from seven months on. Before that is is good to work with them, keeping the training short and almost a little game with the pups. Do trust your intuition if you do not like a particular teacher once at a regular class. Not all teachers are created equal. Having someone come to your home if you are able to teach your dog is fine, and it is not fine. The dog is not being truly put into social situations if it is someone just coming to the house to work with it for you there. Also, having a trainer teach your dog teachers the owner nothing. The dog is going to live with the owner not the trainer. So, a lot of the lessons are really to teach people how to work with their puppies. At the end of the day, the dog is living with its’ owner and wants to serve and bond with its owner. If the owner does not know the proper way to work with his puppy, then how good can the result ever be? Many an experienced dog person still goes to a regular obedience class with every new puppy he has. It is important. The weeks spent doing this will offer a great reward for you for the rest of your life with your pet.

Generally, it is important that you watch some videos about puppy training and read books and articles on these basics before you even consider getting a puppy. If it looks like too much work for you or too much time, perhaps you should consider a bird instead of a dog, or another kind of pet that does not require a lifetime of social interaction and understanding in the human environment. A wealth of material is out there. The American Kennel Club publishes a magazine that deals with nothing but puppy oriented training and the problems that can arise.

The basics cover, house breaking your puppy, playing with your puppy, basic social skills such as puppy leash training, commands such as sit, down, come, wait, and stay. You may well need to teach the puppy what it can chew on and what it can’t. You may need to teach the pup not to jump up on people. You may have a puppy with some aggression issues, or it may exhibit a great deal of uncertainty. The owner needs to take time to teach the puppy with consistency. Puppies do not learn overnight.

Repetition is the mother of mastery in all things, and certainly for a puppy that does not understand English, the skills to teach the dog these basics is the responsibility of the owner, and patience and repetition is a must. Do not, as the books say, “ Shoot the Dog.” Different breeds of dogs learn at different paces. Different breeds will have slight variations in how they best learn. Mutts (multiple breed backgrounds) and the contemporary “ mixed breeds” meaning two pure bred breeds mated to each other but foreign to each other in background are harder to gauge, but certainly are very trainable. Knowing what to expect in such dogs is not possible. People, who tell you that you can train your puppy in seven days, are sending out incorrect expectations to the buyer.

DVD’s on Dog Training: