The Key To Successful Dog Obedience Training
Dogs are very sociable creatures. Some of them can get to the point of being too sociable and may get aggressive. Thus, it is very important to train and control the behavior of your dog.
The last thing you want is to have your dog biting other people. Some statistics show that as high as 77% of dog biting incidents occur within the family. Yet experts say that most of these cases could have been easily avoided with good dog obedience training techniques.
With proper dog obedience training, bad behavioral habits can be removed and dogs can have better control of their actions and feelings when faced with different social and environmental factors.
However, effective training of your dog is easier said than done. One of the most important key element lacking in dog obedience training to produce positive results is what experts call “positive reinforcement”. This actually refers to the proper use of treats, incentives and praises when rewarding your dog for showing positive behavior.
Through positive reinforcement, dogs are able to understand that praises and treats will follow whenever it shows good behavior. An example of positive reinforcement is when you give your dog a treat for obeying your commands. This will cause the dog to think that obeying commands will result in treats.
On the opposite side, if a dog does not obey your command, you should not use punishment as a form of counter-reinforcement. This does not help in training your dog and will only make it worse. It will only confuse your dog and it will begin to doubt its feelings. Thus, only “positive reinforcement” should be employed.
Another important aspect of dog training is to avoid training your dog to take up bad habits. Most people are unaware that they are doing this and instances may occur that the trainer may think he is training the dog to achieve a certain behavior but actually giving the dog a bad habit along the way as well. They may not realize it until the dog displays the bad habit when it thinks the owner is asking for it.
As an example, it is very common for dogs to bark when they see something strange or unfamiliar and this is a good thing. But when they continue to bark when seeing a familiar person then it becomes a problem and dogs should not be rewarded with treats when they are doing that.
Some owners at this point may yell and shout at their dogs to shut up. This kind of reaction from the owners will confuse them and make them think that the reason why their owners are yelling is because they are also enjoying the barking scene and that they are actually “barking” together with their dogs.
The right thing to do is to actually avoid paying any attention to them at all. After a while, they will stop and this is when they should be rewarded.
To sum it all up, effective use of positive reinforcement is the key to successful dog obedience training. Armed with this knowledge, any owner can have the most obedient dog as his best friend.
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