Dog Training Tips

6 Dog Training Tips to help make your training more productive. Training is time consuming and can be fruitless when not approached correctly.

1. Remain Positive. If it's not fun for the dog, they won't want to respond. If your stressed out, upset, or angry no one wants to work with you including your dog. You have to be calm and patient when you train or you could negatively reinforce behaviors that you don't want.

2.Carry Treats In Your Pocket. If you live with a dog the training occurs all the time. It gives you the opportunity to reward your dog at different times or when they are giving a behavior that you want. You can capture your dog's behavior by adding a command to something they already do naturally without having to lure them. Say your dog turns around or circles before he lays down. When you know he is going to circle you can add the command, eventually the dog will associate the command with the behavior.

3.Be Consistent. Everyone needs to use the same commands for the desired behaviors or you will cause confusion. If you don't want the dog to do something such as lay on the couch don't allow it at anytime. The dog will become confused if you let it up once but not another time. Don't use a command more than once. The command should be sit not sit, sit, sit.

4. Dogs Don't Speak Our Language Nor Are They Mind Readers. We have to teach them to understand what we expect when you say different commands. The more you train your dog the better you will be with communicating with them.

5. Use Different Places And Trainers. Dogs don't generalize behaviors so you need to train in various locations. Sometimes they have a hard time behaving for others because they are use to only one person giving them commands.

6. What You Put In Is What You Get Out. Training takes time and many hours of work. Some behaviors your dog will catch onto quickly, others will have to be shaped in order to get the response you want. As humans in a fast paced society we want things immediately but sometimes the best things in life take time.

Training and working with your dog will never be a waste of time.