Monday, May 31, 2010

Best Training Advice

If there was one piece of advice about training dogs that you could give someone what would it be. Maybe you would tell them to use positive reinforcement. You might tell them to be consistent with whatever approach they use. Some might be tempted to say that there is no way you could give just one piece of advice, that it is too complex.

If I was able to give just one piece of advice it would be that you have to remain calm. When you lose your cool is when you lose control of the situation and your emotions take over when your brain should be reasoning out the process. If an EMS person came to an accident scene and fell all to pieces; do you think they would be able to help you out. They wouldn't be able to assess the situation and react accordingly.

When your training dogs you have to remember to remain calm. No dog is perfect and will be able to respond correctly every time you give a command. When you get upset they will be less likely to respond to you. When your emotions are flowing you begin to focus on yourself. If you remain calm you can ask yourself did I somehow signal the dog with my body which made him confused with the command.

I think the best dog trainers are those who are able to adapt to the situation . You build the main foundation of understanding dog behavior and then you learn to adapt it to every unique situation. Your dog may bark all the time. Where one approach to getting them to quit may not work for you but it worked on your neighbors dog. Maybe your dog barks at cars driving by while your neighbors dog is triggered by hearing noises on TV.

If your dog is barking and you let your emotions take over you might start to yell at the dog. The first time you yell your dog shuts up. The yelling was rewarding for you because it worked. The next time your dog barks you yell again and this time he just barks louder. If you don't remain calm you won't be able to think about the situation in particular like what is causing the dog to bark.

When you learn to remain calm you will find yourself not getting stressed out and your dogs will notice the difference. They will start to listen to you more and you will find your relationship with them growing.

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