Having a well trained dog is an excellent addition to your family and will give you much pleasure. The first thing is to establish rules and make sure they are always clear to your dog. But apart from teaching your dog what to do and what not, the way you go about it is important to ensure a long and healthy relationship with your pet.

Shouting and yelling at your dog might get the instant result of your dog obeying you, but seeing that dogs are very intelligent and sensitive, this way of “training” them will only make them afraid of you. As a caregiver you are the person they should be able to trust in, in order to have a loving relationship with 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.

Training your dog with positive reinforcement means that instead of punishing your dog when he does something wrong, you shower your dog with love and affection when he does something right.

Dogs perceive the lack of attention as a punishment in itself so whenever something does go wrong, just dont react to it. During training there are a lot of things that could go wrong, so instead of yelling or punishing your dog, you just dont pay attention to that mistake.

But when you see your dog go to the bathroom where hes supposed to, then shower him with love and affection. He will soon learn that doing his business outside pleases you and he will go out of his way to make it outside whenever possible.

When training your dog using the positive reinforcement technique, make sure you set your dog up to succeed and not fail.

A hard to deal with behavior problem but also most common is dog separation anxiety. Leaving you dog alone creates high level of anxiety because they are social animals, needing a lot of interaction either with other dogs, other animals or humans.

In order to solve dog separation anxiety you will need to first understand this anxiety disorder that brings on a state of extreme panic in your dog. The main cause of the distress is the separation or isolation from their owner.

Different levels of anxiety are possible. Some dogs can deal with being left alone while others might start worrying the minute you have left home, or even as soon as noticing you are preparing yourself to leave.

There are dog breeds that are more prone to separation anxiety so it is important you do your research before buying a dog. If you know you are not going to be home very often and your dog will have to spend time on his own, you better not buy Airedales, Weimaraners or Springer Spaniels for example.

Plus a higher number of dogs that come from a shelter seem to develop dog separation anxiety easily. These dogs might have gone through some severe trauma before ending up in the shelter and once they are placed in a home with an owner they can trust, they will start relying on that owner a lot faster than dogs that havent experienced any trauma in their life already.

Another class of dogs with a higher risk of developing dog separation anxiety are the pups being taken away from their mother too early on in life. This is particularly common in the puppies you can buy in pet stores. They are separated well before the minimum age of 8 weeks and then left in cages waiting for their new owner to come along, which causes feeling of insecurity and anxiety.

Lets look at what causes this behavior problem now that we know which dogs are more likely to suffer.

Seeing that a dog needs a lot of attention, love and companion, neglecting to fill these needs is the major cause for your dog to develop anxiety. If you want your dog to be content and happy, you must take care to properly prepare your dog for those times you cant be with him.

A dog alone at home will start looking for distraction or try to find you. Realizing he is completely alone with nothing to do, anxiety symptoms will start popping up.

Some signs are dogs becoming nervous the moment you are leaving the house (or even as soon as they notice you are preparing to go) and in the extreme cases your dog will completely trash your house while you are away.

Finding the solution and helping your dog deal with separation anxiety can be a tedious time consuming process but when you are taking the right steps and doing the right things in order to build confidence in your dog, great improvement can be achieved.

I am happy to let you know that there are very effective ways to deal with your dogs anxiety problems, even if you already have “tried it all”.

As a dog owner myself and having dealt with dog separation anxiety on several occasions already, I know how hard it can be, coming home each time and find that your dog has been chewing on furniture, peeing everywhere and basically trashing the house, not to mention the number of angry calls from the neighbors.