Positive Training For Dogs

All that positive dog training requires is a little patience, persistence and repetition. Dogs are the most remarkable creatures of habit and, while they are basically very intelligent animals, it is very worthwhile to take into account when training a dog that they really respond very well to repetitive behavior.

When setting out a training program for your dog, you should allow yourself a lot of time. You should set aside three sessions of around 15-20 minutes every day. You should remember that every session requires a lot of patience and consistency. Dogs love and respect order, and if you deviate from your program and form the behavioral paths that you are trying to instill into the dog, then you will cause it to become confused.

You will need to show great patience in your training, repeating the same command for as long as it takes till they get it right. But your dog's excitement when it eventually gets it right will be worth very moment. And don't forget to reward every achievement as soon as it happens. Dogs don't have retentive memories, so they will be come even more confused if you give them a prize for something that they did fifteen minutes ago. In the same vein, if your dog does something wrong and deserves to be punished, then it is equally if not more important that they need to know why they are being punished. Even if it means rubbing their nose in a pile of excrement that they have just deposited on the living room rug.

Consistency in training your dog is also a very major perquisite. Dogs love and need routine, and if their routine is broken they tend to become confused and in order to regain their confidence you may have to retrace your steps in its training program.

Once these basic standards of positive training have been established, then it is possible to carry on the routines and expand your dogs training to as far as you want it to go. This is known as positive reinforcement, and is the process your dog will begin to recognize. It is intended to strengthen the positive behavioral patterns that you wish to encourage in your dog. Your dog will react positively to certain commands, because as a result of doing so, it will receive some kind of pleasant experience as a result. For example, if you give your dog a tidbit, after he sits or stays, then it will tend to obey that command.

In order for this form of training to be effective the reward must be immediate, or the dog will associate the reward with the action that it was doing the exact moment it was given the reward, and once again the dog will become confused. This is how you will be able to recognize someone who is the process of training a dog, because one of their pockets will be bulging with tidbits!

This form of positive training is probably the most widely used simply because it is most pleasant for the trainer and for the dog. There are those that claim that is a form of bribery and the dog will only react when being rewarded. This argument is basically very ineffective as owners do not go through their lives handing out tidbits to their family pet, no matter how much they love them. In time the dog becomes mature enough that his behavior is acceptable to his master, and all the people that matter to it, and will continue on the same path till his dying days.