Housebreaking & Training Your Puppy by Pat Storer

Author:Pat Storer
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
Published: 2000-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Basic Obedience Training

If at all possible, enroll your puppy or dog in an obedience class. Training should be a happy time for both you and your dog. If your dog is treated harshly, she will be afraid or will resent the training sessions. Your dog must eventually understand that she must mind you. Most dogs are followers looking for someone to lead them. Your dog will learn to respect you by the way you treat her and the way you reward her when she has done something that you like.

Sometimes you can unintentionally reinforce undesirable behavior in a dog by saying something in the wrong tone of voice. If the meter reader comes up to the fence and your dog is barking and barking up a storm, and you say — in a nice tone of voice — “Now, that’s okay, he’s a friend,” what your dog is hearing is, “It’s good that you’re barking. You should always bark at that person.” If you want the dog to stop doing something, you must always get her attention first, by calling her name. Then tell her that you don’t like what she’s doing. Be as simple as possible, with something like: “Sandy, no bark.” What the dog understands is, “I don’t like what you are doing. Don’t do it.” A simple “Good dog” in a voice that’s pleasant is sufficient to let the dog know she has done something that has pleased you.

There are countless methods for teaching a dog obedience. The method I’ll describe here is the most pleasant for both trainer and dog. You will use treats as rewards at first, but eventually you will get the response you want from your dog for praise alone. Your goal is for your dog to work for praise and loving. She will soon learn when you’re getting ready to teach her something new.

For the sake of description, I’ve named the imaginary dog in the next section Maple.

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