Positive Reinforcement Training for Your Dog in Easy Steps
There is no doubt about the importance of training your dog well, especially if you are looking for a long lasting and healthy relationship with the pet living in your house. This means that the basic rules must be lived by and training your dog to do certain things is important. More important however is the way you go about training your dog.
A dog is incredibly sensitive and learns quickly who the boss is in your home. If a dog is trained with harsh words, yelling and hitting then he will learn to fear you instead of love you. You want to establish a bond with your dog, so that your dog will trust you as a loving caregiver. If the dog expects you to react with anger and physical punishment then you cannot expect to have a loving relationship with a dog who wants to be your companion.
So negative attitudes will make your dog afraid and shy, but doing the complete opposite, training your dog with positive reinforcement will not only speed up the training process but it will also make it so much easier and pleasant. Once your dog is encouraged in a positive way, it will try and start pleasing you and work hard at doing anything you ask of him.
Positive reinforcement means that you will take extra care to praise your dog for actions you require of him and not focusing on those slip up and mistakes he makes.
A good example is your dog having an “accident” around the house. Instead of yelling at him for being a bad boy, just dont give it any attention at all. Not getting any attention from you at all is already a punishment in itself since your dog will always try to get your approval.
However, if you see your dog doing something you approve of and want him to do, make sure you give him a lot of affection and love for doing the right thing. This way your dog will start relating different actions with happy feelings and will start choosing to do those things that will get him that praise.
When training your dog using the positive reinforcement technique, make sure you set your dog up to succeed and not fail.
dog training | Danah Reed | 04 March 2009 |
