9 Things To Avoid When Training Your Dog
November 5th, 2011 by Michael
Here are 8 things you should always avoid when you are going through the training process:
- Do not punish the dog when you are angry. This will scare your dog and ultimately create a lack of trust. You do not want your dog to respond to you out of fear, because fearful dogs can become aggressive.
- Do not end your training session negatively. If your dog engages in a wrong behavior, correct it and continue on until it does something positive. Then end the session on a positive note, with plenty of reinforcement.
- Do not order the dog more than a few times or nag it. Getting your dog to respond involves timing and patience. Repetition of words does not make your dog understand any better. Shouting words does not help the dog either. It is a matter of waiting until your dog is ready to perform the action.
- Do not coax your dog and then quickly punish it. You are going to associate your coaxing with a negative response. Your dog will learn not to trust you and it is detrimental to future attempts at training.
- Do not chase your dog to get it. It will come to you after training. There are clear exceptions, such as when your dog is loose in the neighborhood. If its indoors, let your dog learn that it must follow you, not have you come get it.
- Do not loose your cool when you are training the dog. There is a great amount of patience required for training, and if you aren’t patient, it is better to find a person who can tolerate it. Again, the dog will become fearful of you and this is never good.
- Do not punish the dog for a failure to obey. Rather, punish for bad behaviors. The dog will not understand why you are punishing it if you are punishing something that it did not do right. Instead show a neutral response to a failed behavior.
- Do not confuse your dog by praising it for a behavior during one session, then punishing the same behavior during another session. Be sure you are clear as to what behaviors you want to reward and/or punish.
- Do not allow others to confuse the dog by giving different commands. Be sure that everyone in the house is involved in training the dog by teaching them your training methods. This is a common way that training becomes fruitless.
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Tags: aggressive, fearful dogs, positive note, scare your dog, training process, training the dog, wrong behaviorPosted in
