How to Train Your Puppy by Winning Devotion and Confidence
By Verlyn Spreeman
2006-10-29
How to Train Your Puppy by Winning Devotion and Confidence
The basis of conditioning any animal is winning its trust, pride and admiration. True training cannot begin until the animal has accepted you as its leader, respects you and entrusts you with his or her confidence.
The mistake many dogie owners make is mistaking love and affection for attentiveness and confidence. While it is essential to love your new puppy, it is also very important that the puppy respects you and looks up to you as his leader. Dogs are naturally pack animals, and each dog looks to the lead dog for communication and leadership. Making yourself the pack leader is pivotal to the achievement of training any dog.
Failure to gain the awareness of the dog can create a dog who is headstrong, out of control and even dangerous. Difficult dogs are dangerous, whether they are created through bad breeding, owner unawareness or just plain bad training. Remember to train the dog right from the start, since retraining a problem dog is much more troubling than training a puppy right the first time.
It is important for any new dog owner, whether working with a 12 week old puppy or a more mature dog, to immediately get the respect of the animal. That does not mean using uncivilized or dangerous handling methods, but it does mean letting the dog know that the situation is in your control. Dogs need clarity in their lives, and they will not resent the owner taking control. In fact, the dog will respect your taking the role of trainer and coach as you begin your training session.
When working with the dog, it is vital to keep the training sessions short at first. This is definitely important when working with a young puppy, since puppies tend to have much shorter attention spans than veteran dogs. Keeping the training sessions short, and fun, is essential for proper training.
Beginning training sessions should focus on the most basic commands. The heel command is one of the most basic, and one of the easiest to teach. Start by putting the dog or puppy in a correctly fitted training collar. Be sure to remember to follow the instructions for fitting and sizing the collar to insure that it works as intended. Begin to walk and let your dog walk along side you. If the dog begins to pull, ever so slightly pull on the leash. This in turn will tighten the training collar and correct the dog. If the gentle pressure is ineffective, it may be necessary to slowly increase the pressure. Constantly be careful to not over-correct the dog. Using too much pressure could scare the dog and cause it to strain more. If the opposite problem occurs and the dog lags behind, the owner should gently encourage it until it is walking beside the owner.
Most dogs figure out the heeling perception fairly quickly, and figure out that they should walk beside their owners, neither lagging behind nor pulling ahead. Once the dog has mastered heeling at a leisurely pace, the owner should slow his or her pace and allow the dog to adjust along with it. The owner should also speed up the pace and allow the dog to speed up as well. Finally, walking along and changing pace most often will affirm the lesson that the dog should always walk at the heel of the handler.
From heeling, the next step should be to halt on demand. This halt command works well as an addition to heel. As you are walking, stop and watch you dog. Many dogs immediately figure out that they are expected to stop when their handler does. Others may need the reminder of the leash and the training collar.
After the halt on command has been mastered, the handler should train the dog to sit on command as well. Once the dog has stopped, the handler gently pushes on the dog's hindquarters to encourage the sit. Usually, after this walk, halt, sit behavior has been done a few times, the dog will begin to sit on his own each time he stops. Of course, it is very important to provide praise, and perhaps even a treat, every time the dog does as he is expected.
If you properly train your new household member you will have a happy and healthy friend for life!
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